Why do people make such a big deal about shark fin soup, why not just make shark soup? Is there such a big difference between the fin and the rest of the shark?
In: 5
Sharks are large beasts, and are found far from land. This means that the largest cost for harvesting a shark is boat space. It’s just not worth the cost for most fishers to catch and sell entire sharks; they’d rather avoid them being in their nets at all.
Shark fins, now; those are a small fraction of the shark by mass, and are worth most of the money an entire shark would be worth. This means a random boat is financially incentivized to kill many times as many sharks if they can sell the fins and dump the rest. This leads to the overfishing of an often-endangered-predator, which is generally a bad thing.
Latest Answers