Worrying vid about Raja Ampat

[Bora_Horza]

Scary stuff about shark finning, all the big sharks fished out, not a happy story. All this is happening now, wonder what the future will hold?

An interesting bit of this vid is from 7.30 onwards, describing how the 'live reef fish' industry is following on from the shark fin industry.

 

[tangfish]

I can't see the video on my phone here, but I sure am glad that Shark Savers is doing the work they're doing in Indonesia. If you haven't heard of them, check them out.

 

[Big fish63]

this really is truely awful and needs to be stopped NOW!

 

[highdesert]

this really is truely awful and needs to be stopped NOW!

It's a horrendous practice, and I totally agree with you. It needs to be stopped. But here's the problem ... there's a market for these shark fins, and as long as there's a demand, the practice will continue. You'll find shark fin soup on menus of restaurants all over Eastern and Southeast Asia. Can you think of a way to dissuade that market from ordering shark fin soup? This will require a massive education effort to overcome, and I have no clue where one would start.

 

[Indah]

Could somebody explain in a few sentences why exactly it is a disaster if the sharks are fished out.
This would be a great help in discussions with people involved. Until now you can hear: "sharks eat fish, less sharks more fish".

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

As a keystone species, sharks keep the balance of reef fish and mid sized fish in check. Without the sharks, other mid sized fish that eat the reef fish would overpopulate and decimate the other smaller populations. The balance of the ecosystems would be thrown off, as is already happening, and all species suffer.
Destroying entire shark populations will cause ultimate reef and sea life destruction. Shark finnning claims approximately 10 million, yes million sharks a year.

The cruel practice of catching by line fishing and then pulling the body up into the boat, slicing off all fins, and then dumping the still-living shark back into the sea, mangled and helpless, to bleed to death, starve, or be eaten alive by other creatures like crabs and fish, is absolutely unforgivable.

 

[Luko]

Until now you can hear: "sharks eat fish, less sharks more fish".

Says who???

There were a lot more sharks 30 years ago, there were also many more fish 30 years ago, from a statistics perspective, it would rather conclude to "the more fish, the more sharks".

Besides that I am not sure that killing an apex predator reduces the risk for preys (ie. the "regular" bait fish) of being eaten by a secondary predator, on the contrary it would increase the chances and so on and so forth.

Hence the "less sharks, more fish" argument doesn't logically stand for more than 10 seconds.

Edit : Zendiver explained it briliantly before I pushed the button.

 

[xariatay]

Thanks for sharing the video! Very depressing... I have shared it on my FB. People don't understand that "when Sharks die, the Ocean dies." Although there are more newlyweds who now choose not to serve shark fins, in 1 year, I have to refuse several invitations to wedding banquets because shark fins are still being served...

Now that Raja Ampat is declared a shark sanctuary, hopefully the number of sharks will rebound. Shark Sanctuary declared in Raja Ampat But somehow, I don't feel very hopeful.

 

[Indah]

Playing again the lawyer of the devil: less sharks means more mid size fish? That is great! More Red Snapper and Groupers to be cached and exported. Actually, this was the sad story of the video as well. Please, still looking for that smashing one liner or even five sentences that would convince local fishermen, officials and 1.000.000.000 Chinese.

 

[Luko]

less sharks means more mid size fish? That is great! More Red Snapper and Groupers to be cached and exported.

Nah...it just means more starving mid size fish which after eating all smaller fish eventually become smaller and scarcer sized fish... now you got less sharks = smaller and less fish. Is that still satisfying for your fishermen?