30 Jan 2012
Unique Treehouse Village in Rural Oregon

25 Jan 2012
World's Oldest Living Things

Whether the global marine ecosystems can suffer such an onslaught is debatable. The arguments against shark-finning are, by now, well known in Hong Kong. It is said that sharks take decades to reach adulthood, and by ripping them out of the oceans at such an unprecedented rate, we are depriving them of them of the chance to reproduce, and thus repopulate their decimated numbers. Cruelty may be the issue at stake for those who see the wasteful practice of slicing the fins off the shark at sea and tossing them back over the side of the boat, but in Kesen-numa the whole shark is landed. It is said that every part of every shark landed at Kesen-numa is processed there and then consumed. Even it's heart. For the people of Kesen-numa are seen as a little strange by ordinary Japanese. Locals can ill afford the shark fin soup available at many of the town's small side street restaurants, but the locals have developed a peculiar, if bloodthirsty, fondness for raw salmon shark heart sashimi. An exotic 'delicacy', which, according to local people, is consumed nowhere else in Japan. It is left up to the tourists who visit Kesen-numa to order the city's famous speciality, shark fin soup.

And tourists do come. Some are attracted to the splendid hiking along Miyagi Prefecture's rugged coastline, whilst others are seafood aficionados, looking for their next hit of sublime ultra-fresh exotic seafood. Early risers among them will inevitably make their way to the dock, where they are confronted with one of the most bloody spectacles they are likely ever to witness in their lives - Kesen-numa's very own industrial shark-finning show.

A quick walk around the town, reveals a parallel universe, where even the most basic concepts of marine conservation do not exist. Just a stone's throw from the dock, is the 'Kesen-numa Rias Shark Museum', which visitors enter through a giant set of shark jaws. Once inside, tourists are first confronted by real copies of faded front pages of tabloid newspapers from around the world that sensationalize shark attacks on swimmers. Make no mistake, sharks are bad, evil, a threat to humanity and they should be erdaicated from the face of the earth, the headlines, and so it seems the museum's message screams at us. This despite the fact that humans are statistically far more likely to die from crossing the road, than from an attack by a shark. After passing exhibits relating to the natural history of sharks at the half way mark, visitors leaving the museum pass a glass display box filled with all kinds of products one can make from shark; shark fin soup in a can, shark cartillage pills which are supposedly good for joint pain, and hand-crafted handbags made from shark leather. But not a word about conservation and the critical situation facing global shark stocks due to over-fishing.

Could a new battle between marine conservationists battling to save the sharks and the Japanese fishing lobby be on the horizon? First there was the annual showdown in the Southern Ocean between the Japanese whaling fleet and the environmental groups Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd to save the whale. Then there was the runaway success of the Oscar-winning documentary 'The Cove' which exposed the brutal Japanese trade in captive dolphins. One would think the tide is slowly turning.

Isn't it time Kesen-numa City, Japan's dirty little shark secret, was shut down too

Tags: 

* Japan's Shark Fin Capital * Kesen numa City * blue * fin * tuna * whales * sharks * dolphins

Categories: 

Environment