Ecological, Cultural, and Economic Issues

The main counter argument against this ban is that it is discriminatory to the Chinese American community.

However, this is not an issue of cultural discrimination, because as David McGuire, founder of Sea Stewards, a non profit project of the Ocean Foundation, said, “Sharks belong to all of us.”

This idea of discrimination is a poor attempt to stop this ban and has no real weight as an argument.

Members of the Chinese American community and politicians backed the ban on shark finning, including Chinese American California State Assembly member, Paul Fong.

Shark fin soup has no nutritional value for the consumer, and in fact the shark fin does not add any flavor, just texture to the soup.

People who consume shark fins are have a higher chance of developing mercury poisoning and Alzheimer's disease.

A San Francisco chef, Corey Lee, found a way to create faux shark fin for shark fin soup. He said that customers do not realize it is faux shark fin until they are told afterwards.

“This dish of the emperors is now being eaten by hundreds of millions of people,” McGuire said. Today, fisherman are focusing on the amount of money brought in by the shark fins, but that only turns out to be around $100. It is a fact that more money is brought in by tourism, around $815,000 over the period of one sharks life.

As the top predators in the ocean ecosystem, sharks play a crucial role in the stability of the ecosystem, but sadly 20 million blue sharks alone are killed every year. Shark finning affects both the biotic and abiotic factors of the ocean ecosystem. Abiotic components are non-living chemical and physical factors in the environment, like the fact that people like to eat shark fin soup and therefore fin sharks. Biotic factors are the living things that shape an ecosystem, like humans killing sharks.

If humans continue to fin sharks and leave them to die at the bottom of the ocean, we will disrupt the entire ocean ecosystem and the biodiversity of life. For example, it will change the dynamic of the trophic levels. Trophic levels show energy that is passed between different organisms which includes producers, secondary consumer, and the primary consumer. Sharks are the top predators of the ocean, but once their species is wiped out from over fishing, it will throw the energy balance and disrupt the ocean’s ecosystem. Humans have replaced sharks as the top apex predators, therefore animals that sharks eat, like seals and sea lions, will increase in population. “We’ve got a proliferation of sea lions… The system is completely out of whack,” McGuire said. The food that the seals eat will, like medium size fish that we as humans also consume, will become overfished. Then there will be an abundance of smaller animals that those fish eat, which will decrease the biodiversity of the underwater ecosystem. “We’re vacuuming up the ocean,” McGuire continued.