Yikes. I think of our poor "Sharky" every time I see a picture like this.
Here's the issue at hand (see KQED link below) It's long but its worth it: (You might try listening while you read this post?)
Those pesky alpha predators are back in the news. Thanks to Ca. Assemblymen: Paul Fong and Jared Huffman. Despite the fact that this issue is as close to an ecological no-brainer as one can come, Senator Leland Yee has thrust his own ampulae of Lorenzini into the mix, playing the race card for anyone gullible enough to listen.
The issue here is shark fins. More specifically, shark fins coming into this country cut off from the body of the animal. In other words in a manner in which they can not be identified. That's what's happening right now. Even as we speak. No matter what Yee and his cohorts may say, very little, if any, of the shark fin trade arrives with a 500 pound shark attached to the fins--for easy identification.
That's not to say it would be impossible to purchase reasonably local, legal, commercially caught sharks. The catch data for California indicates considerable fisheries for blue sharks, shortfin makos, threshers, angels and "cow sharks,"-- either on their own or as by-catch in the tuna and swordfish fisheries. (My book is ten years old, forgive me if any of these were shut down recently). So we do actually have some commercial landings of shark species in California.
Okay, you really want to eat some shark meat? Fine, grow some testicles and do it like this guy.
But let's not get silly here. Hundreds of pounds of shark fins--dried and completely unidentifiable--arrive in this city every week largely from Asia and Mexico. And Leland Yee confusing the issue by raising the ugly specter of racism, ain't gonna change that fact.
This is not an American fishery issue, as he seems to indicate... it's an import-export issue. It's a trade issue. You want to make your sharkfin soup out of Californa caught thresher shark, or the Monterey seafood guide's yellow choice BC, bottom line caught spiny dogfish (the only shark fishery on earth that even gets a yellow rating!). Fish that have been tagged, weighed, identified, added to the quota, etc? I got no problem with that.
These last two pictures are the only way a shark should be caught. Go ahead buddy, have some damned soup. You earned it! But you better be careful,"waste of fish" is a punishable offense in California!
But that's not the issue, Mr. Yee. The issue is importation of unidentifiable fins. The stuff of which most sharkfin soup is, evidently, made.
"However," Lee said to reporters last week, "the proposed state law to ban all shark fins from consumption -- regardless of species or how they were fished or harvested -- is the wrong approach and an unfair attack on Asian culture and cuisine."
I'd really like to see a graph that shows the different types of sharks typically used in shark fin soup in this city. You telling me it's mostly local threshers, makos, blues, spiny dogfish? I'd be shocked if that were true. But I remain open, as always, to being proven wrong {MFN: if anyone has access to records showing what types of sharks are being served in local shark fin soup joints, let me know}.
As long as shark fins are allowed to be sold, apart from their bodies, there will be a major problem with monitoring them. Dried, dessicated fins are impossible to i.d. without elaborate DNA testing. To argue this or impede the process of banning shark finning and the importation of shark fins into this country, is morally reprehensible--and environmentally unwise (trophic cascade anyone?) Even if there was a united Asian front in support of shark finning (and there is NOT), culture should never trump nature--I don't care how unfair it is. Culture by its definition is mutable, it changes. Reef sharks, once extinct, don't come back. Shouldn't that be the bottom line?
Exclusion
The sad thing here is that there really is a long and miserable history of anti-Asian, and even anti Asian fishing legislation in this city and state. I mean, my gawd! The Chinese Exclusion Act and dozens of smaller, more petty city statutes, like the ones that banned ponytails, or poles for carrying buckets... are some of the most shameful examples of institutional racism on record. And we're not even delving into the non-institutional side of things: axe handle riots, lynchings, police brutality, extortion, slaving your life away on the railroad (and making half as much as an Irishman for the same job). Obviously, it would be absurd and out of place for me to try to list all this stuff here, or do justice to it, so I won't even try.
Axe handle riots, 19th century SF
In short. There's plenty for the Asian community, and specifically the Chinese community to feel targeted and victimized about.
But the the finning of sharks? The most wasteful, unregulated and potentially disastrous fishing practice on earth? One that without immediate action, has the potential to wipe out the food web's keystone species, and cause cataclysmic, irreversible ecological damage?
Really?
Also... someone please explain to me what a "sustainable shark fishery" looks like (kind of like a sustainable Rhino hunting season, right?) That phrase kept getting bandied about in the news last week. Recreational? Okay, I can buy that... leopard sharks, (3 per day) sevengills, (1 per day) brown smoothhounds (10 per day--yes people eat 'em) that all seems reasonable... but sustainable commercial shark fishing? I dunno.
{Like I said above Seafood Watch only lists one shark fishery as even moderately sustainable: bottom-lined spiny dogfish out of BC. But who, other than Steven Rinella, wants to eat a spiny dogfish?}
Someone named Michael Kwong of Hop Woo Seafood, would have you believe that this is an example of bycatch.
Here's a quote from an article I found online:
Michael Kwong, a local seafood processor whose family has been in the business since 1905, said sharks are not even targeted by fishermen.
"It's usually a bycatch, but when they do catch a shark, they are going to use it. The entire carcass gets used," said Kwong, one of several restaurateurs and business owners who accompanied Yee at a news conference opposing AB376. "If this bill passes, there will be a lot of collateral damage."
Right, the people profiting from selling the worst, most unsustainable seafood product on earth, will no longer make money off of it. That's the collateral damage.
Seriously. Sharkfin soup is not a subsistence item, so let's not treat it like one. Shark fin soup is a status symbol. Its price is part of the attraction. It also signifies great moments in life. (Been reading about it all week, folks). Fine I get that, it has cultural significance. Kind of like the fish equivalent of an expensive bottle of champagne.
The official MFN answer: Tough shit! (I tried "tough shark urea!" but it didn't have the same ring). Find something else to eat.
Hop Woo
I Googled this supposedly "local" company (Hop Woo) for like a half an hour before I gave up. Which probably says more about my infer-net skills than anything else. I noticed there was a Hop Woo Seafood Restaurant down in LA but I failed to find a "local" fish co., by the same name. (I guess KQED got it wrong--anyone ever heard of these guys?) Maybe there's more local shark product down south? Closer to Mexico? I dunno. I thought I knew the names of all the local fish companies--huh, I guess I don't.
Thinking about this... Maybe you could make the case for some kind of non-wasteful, well monitored long-lining of threshers and short fin makos? You'd be wrong, of course, but you could make the case.
But the kind of fishing we're talking about here is about as far from sustainability as dropping a stick of dynamite into San Gregorio Creek. Really, it'd be laughable... it wasn't so gawd awful sad.
Tell me something... if they are planning to cut fillets off these sharks, why are they leaving them in the sun? Not rhetorical, I'd really like to know. Do they dry them out with the guts (and piss) still in them? They don't even look like they were bled. And if they aren't planning to fillet them, why did they drag them back to the dock? Someone talk to me here. What's up with this picture?Beach caught? Surf seine? Depth charge? What?
Really funny that nobody called this guy out--they're so polite on NPR! Especially when he had the balls to say to John McCosker (a shark expert's shark expert if ever there was one), that he (Kwong) could very easily identify every shark fin that came into his possession--without DNA testing. Think about that for a minute. Guy must be pretty good. Better than Jacques Cousteau even.
Jacques was good... but 200 sharks?
You gonna tell me, this dude, a fishmonger at Hop Woo Fish Co., can correctly name and identify 200 species of shark (latin names or just common?)--and John McCosker can't? I would bet if he's a good fishmonger, he can name, maybe... 20? 30? And that's being kind. Probably more like 6.
Whatta joke. The thing that nobody in the uber-polite NPR crowd asked this guy of course, is how much money he makes selling shark fins.
In Conclusion:
"Leland Yee would have you believe it's a cultural thing..."
Sen. Leland Yee would have you believe it's a cultural thing... but is it?
Either way, it doesn't matter. It is the stated position of the Monkeyface News that nobody's culture gets to trump nature. Do we allow the oceans to be stripped clean of sharks because of somebody's wedding tradition?
What about steelhead? rhinos? tigers? bears?
Oh my.
The thing that really irks me here is that Sen. Lee takes it upon himself to speak as the representative of a larger group.
But I call bullshit!
It sure seemed to me, there were a lot of Asians calling/writing in to the KQED radio show last week--to voice their non-support for shark fin soup. "It's a status symbol," (I paraphrase) some one wrote in. In fact, in the last week I have spoken to about 4 or 5 of my fellow Asian recreational angling brothers. Not a single one of whom supports the finning of sharks or thinks it a custom worthy of perpetuation, (or even whining about). Albeit these are younger guys in their twenties and thirties, but when I asked a very well known local pier angler, who happens to be of Vietnamese/Chinese descent, what he thought about the destruction of sharks for shark fin soup, he shook his head, spat and said:
"Fuck that noise."
And I would like to say for the record that this is now the official MFN position on the matter.
If shark fin soup is so damned important to you, go get a license, buy a few pieces of squid, and catch yourself a leopard/spiny dogfish/sevengill/smoothhound/or yes even a soupfin shark (legal and native here). It's easy, cheap (cheapest shark fin soup in North America) fun for the whole family, and the best part is this: you can do with the shark's fins whatever the hell you please.
I'm off my soap box...
But remember what Yao Ming says: "when the buying stops the killing can too."
Kirk-out
PS: I'm posting Yao Ming's wonderful video again... if you haven't seen it yet, check it out:
I read about this when it came out and called bullshit too. Tradition in the sense of the word doesn't indicate whether it's good or bad. Turkey for Thanksgiving is a tradition, but so is killing albinos for "medicine" in Tanzania.
So Leland, if you want to continue your tradition, have at it. Just remember this moment when shark fins are only available on the black market, and you had a chance to make a difference.
Posted by: Ryan | 02/19/2011 at 04:23 PM
I just found your website. YOU ROCK Monkey face!!! I cut a pasted a few of your quotes, sent them to Leland and told him I was not going to vote for him, ooooooooooohhhh. Its time for a wake up call. I am going to start calling Chinese restaurants in the city and yell at any who are selling shark fin soup. Let’s get ready to rumble.
Matt Martin
Posted by: Matt Martin | 02/19/2011 at 08:31 PM
L Yee could partly be responding because of tradition, but also for the support from the Chinese community. He also spoke out against that guy who made fun of the way Chinese speak. So, to some extent he's unifying the Chinese crowd by crying fowl,... uh, errrr,'Something's fishy'. Yeah, something's fishy. Look at the pictures!
We can't all be headed the same way; like become homogenized. But I've learned over the years, that instead of putting the brakes on, or detracting from something, it's better to 'add value'; not polarize. Or as perhaps Supervisors McGoldrick or Earlsbernd would in my words, 'put a face on it'. I haven't heard him speak or what the legislation is totally about, but from experience I know Leland Yee is no Earlsbernd or McGoldrick. Perhaps he's leaning far out there to get leverage for some positive gain.
But yeah, get your own damn shark fin.
Posted by: Rick94110 | 02/20/2011 at 09:20 AM
Kirk, thank you, thank you, Call em as you see um son!
Cheers!
Posted by: Brett Reeder | 02/20/2011 at 06:15 PM
I like all the soapboxing lately. And yeah, I've had it with these rich fucks.
Just do it:
http://www.blastmilk.com/decollete/gallery/guillotine/guillotine19.jpg
Posted by: Rol | 02/21/2011 at 12:05 AM
Kirk, we'll never grow tired of responsible reporting (can't belive I called it that) ...keep it up. Speaking of BullShit...how about getting Penn and Teller of BullShit fame (and much more) to take on the shark fishery or maybe the world's fisheries...
Posted by: otobe | 02/22/2011 at 10:45 AM
You would be surprised how many wealthy, successful people in Taiwan and China believe that sharkfin harvesting is both ecological and sustainable... Somehow it managed to become "common
knowledge" that when you cut off the Shark's fins and release it, the fins grow back. Still can't believe some of the discussions I've had about this with some otherwise very well educated people.
Posted by: Scott Parker | 02/23/2011 at 04:33 PM