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It's hard to specifically attribute why any fish population is decreasing, but it's not at all a stretch to say demand for shark fins contributes to overfishing
by kajecounterhack 4y ago
It's hard to specifically attribute why any fish population is decreasing, but it's not at all a stretch to say demand for shark fins contributes to overfishing of sharks. This isn't something anyone can quantify well because so much fishing is done illegally and shark finning especially being controversial isn't something folks advertise themselves as doing, but it seems very safe to assume there is an impact here caused by the trade.
We also know that sharks take a long time to grow and as important apex predators, their declining numbers have bad knock-on effects for other species (threatening extinction may apply to not only the sharks themselves but the ecosystems they are part of). So banning finning feels unambiguously good?
- waffleiron 4y agoBanning finning is unambiguously good, and sharks are indeed and important keystone species. However if the majority of shark deaths occur as by-catch or due to global warming there isn’t a lot of change in outcome. This is like the whaling on Greenland, cruel and highly visible but also doesn’t impact you or me in any way. It’s easy to push these types of bans through, but it can also be a distraction of the actual harms that we are perpetuating.
- kajecounterhack 4y agoThe health of fisheries is often death by inaction because every special interest group blames each other -- recreational anglers blame commercial anglers blame climate change and nobody can point the finger hard enough to get anything done, exactly by way of arguing "this is just a distraction from the actual harm" We just can't know whether any action will move the needle, not for sure, unless we go do it.