Major Websites Selling Shark Fin Products

At first I couldn't believe it. Amazon.com selling shark fin soup? Say it aint so! I caught a posting in a scuba diving forum regarding a can of shark fin soup on Amazon.com. Immediately I contacted Amazon and then rallied the troops. Some of the top scuba diving and marine related websites and marine organizations initiated a call to action. Letters are hopefully pouring in to Amazon's investor relations and customer service departments requesting that they act ethically and remove these items from their catalog. Amazon has already pulled one item and I'm sure will remove the second. Thumbs up to Amazon for doing the right thing!

On a grander scale....
Last year, it was discovered that China's online trading giant, Alibaba.com, is supporting the destructive shark fin trade by allowing the continued sales of shark products, much of which is known to be illegally fished in protected waters such as the Galapagos. Protests and bad publicity have begun to permeate the internet, and Sea Shepherd is now involved. Enough bad press may help to bring the website to its senses and do the right thing, following in the fashion of Amazon. How much revenue does Alibaba generate from the sale of shark products? We don't know. But to put Alibaba's size and market position into perspective - they do $4 billion of transactions annually, it has been reported that Alibaba.com accounts for 10% of all the pirated music and movie sales in China, and they own Yahoo China. A prosperous Asian company of this size should make a clear statement to the Asian community that the shark fin trade is bad, and that a sustainable marine environment is important.

Here is a video of shark finning in Raja Empat, Indonesia, one of my favorite diving areas due to the biodiversity and abundance of marine life. This is also where a license to brutally torture these beautiful apex predators costs just $30 per month.

We are slowly (or not so slowly?) destroying the planet. There is a significantly large grassroots movement to elicit change, but at what point is it a little too late? When will we as a global society wake up and begin living life differently? The grassroots actions and voices of the people can only accomplish so much. When will governments and businesses change policies to support the global ethical prerogative? Only then will we make a difference at the scale required...