Tide turns in favour of saving sharks

Straits Times 10 Apr 10;

THE fight to take the ocean's top predator off Singapore dining tables was renewed at yesterday's opening of the Asia Dive Expo.

Shark Savers, an international conservation charity, said it will carry out an awareness campaign on the trade in shark's fin through billboards, television advertisements and digital signs in Singapore. Visitors to the expo at the Suntec City Convention Centre can also take a pledge not to eat shark's fin soup.

Although China is estimated to consume 90 per cent of the world's shark's fin, other countries, including those in the West such as Spain, are contributing to what is estimated to be a US$310 million (S$433 million) trade.

Underwater film-maker Shawn Heinrichs, 38, who is on the board of Shark Savers, said Singapore is a major trader and a consumer of shark's fin soup. But he has noticed a 'a shift in attitude', he added.

Indeed, shark lovers have launched campaigns before, such as local animal welfare group Animal Concerns Research and Education Society which spoke out on the plight of sharks at the Speakers' Corner in April last year.

But while there has been some improvement - Resorts World Sentosa, for example, has announced that it would not offer shark's fin on its banquet and restaurant menus - progress has been slow.

Observed Ms Ming Sassoon, 32, who stopped consuming shark's fin soup when she took up diving 10 years ago: 'People's attitudes have definitely changed in the last 10 years. There is hope people will stop eating it. But I don't think it'll happen in the next 20 years.'

An estimated 100 million sharks are killed each year, mostly for their fins. About a third of shark species are threatened with extinction - the hammerhead and the oceanic whitetip being two examples - with numbers down by 90 per cent in some waters.

'Sharks have been in the ocean for 450 million years, but in the last 20 years they have been driven towards extinction due to greed, apathy and ignorance. Attitudes must change if we want to save the sharks and the ocean's ecosystem,' said Mr Heinrichs.