How would you feel if people are trying to kill you to make a soup out of your ears?

Sharks were the top preditors since many millions of years, but humans, our generations are killing about hundred million sharks a year. This is a very serious problem, shark's popualtions already decresed by 90% in last 20 years. Sharks are in control of other creatures populations in the ocean. If we kill too many sharks, there will be too much other creatures in the ocean, which will break the food web.

Even though few people already realized the problem, they didn't take actions. because shark's fin soup symbolizes wealth and respect, which is a very important to Asian(especially Chinese) cultures. Also, people think sharks as human eaters which I also thought was true, but I learned that sharks are not human eaters by watching the video called "Sharkwater" directed by Rob Stewer. The film inspired me very much because it taught me that facts and reasons why we should stop shark finning. I think people will defenetly think differently against shark's finning if they watch this film.

Before we learned about shark finning in our global issues, to be honest, I didn't really care about the issue. Since our family are asians, I often ate shark's fin soup whenever I went to Chinese Restoraunt and weddings. I was really shocked when I watched the movie, because it told me that shark's fin soup are just chicken soups and shark's fin doesn't even taste anything, they just feel like our ears.(which really disgusted me.) I also felt really sad when they showed us how people do there shark finning and long line fishing, it was such a cruel thing that no one should do. I decided to not eat Shark's fin soup ever, I would eat chicken soup instead. I also agreed at last when Rob Stewer said, "It's not only to save sharks, it's also to save us." What would our next generation think of us, if sharks go exinct? I don't even want to think about it. This issue must be stoped.

Our global issues class are planing do an action project about sharks.

(a) Education Pre Project
-Fundraising ( Shark t-shirts, bags?)
-Educating ourselves (doing some other research on shark fin soup)
-Promotion

(b) Awareness raising
-Assemblies
-Movie
(c) Action
-Games about sharks
-Movie ('Sharkwater')
-Simulation
-Petition
-Fin sales
-foods (that might disgust people about shark's fin food.)



Links:http://www.navy.mil.za/archive/0807/080731_sharks/pic08.jpg
http://www.travel-images.com/hong-kong463.jpg