If there ever was a real Villain in the World…

Eugene Lapointe.

Disgraced Secretary-general of CITES.

Now, President of the WCTF and IWMC, Japanese astroturf.

Now those bastards are at CITES, posing as NGOs.

They have produced stuff like this and this, and are spreading their lies and disinformation among the delegates who don't know whom to believe, and all is being paid for by the fishing interests and Japan's political agenda of not wanting any marine species listed. The latter BTW driven by the whaling controversy - and may we once again thank the SSCS for continuing to stand in the way of any reasonable solutions!

Lapointe has penned this shit.

Working for you with over 81 years of experience in the CITES Secretariat indeed!

You = see above!

So what about the math.

An "average Shark" weighs 20.8kg (see the paper) and at an average fin/body ratio of 5%, it yields approx one, not 30 kilos of fins - this wet, when the fins are dried we're talking 1 pound, max. After processing, the filaments may weigh half of that - just enough for approx 5 servings. 

Assuming that the fins of the 100m Sharks of the paper are all being used for soup (an assumption the paper does not support!), those Sharks will yield 500 million servings/year - and this spread over many Asian communities world wide and not only the Chinese in China!

Makes one, likely far less bowls/year pp!

What a total bastard.

Wikipedia - interesting!

Ha!
David reports that he has tried to edit the Shark fin soup article and that his revision has been instantly undone.
The history tab reveals this.

• (cur | prev) 23:19, 7 January 2012‎ Cold Season (talk | contribs)‎ m (20,754 bytes) (Undid revision 470165581 by OfficetoOcean (talk)) (undo)
• (cur | prev) 23:15, 7 January 2012‎ OfficetoOcean (talk | contribs)‎ (19,873 bytes) (undo) (Tag: references removed)

Very interesting!
I did some quick checking and it really appears that there's something going on here, with already one dedicated Facebook page and with at least one rather angry sinophile activist, one Clement Tan, using the Wikipedia link in order to corroborate his dislike of recent positive developments in Singapore.

Much ado about nothing?
Personally, I think this is rather alarming.
Wikipedia is clearly very much mainstream and perused by hundreds, if not thousands of people daily, and finding this kind of disinformation makes me doubt what I thought were the advantages of it being a wiki, i.e. a collaborative democratic source of information. I thought that there was some process whereby misleading information was being weeded out, but apparently this ain't so.

The Wikipedia piece is certainly cleverly worded.
It is true that even if one consults the the Red List, the vast majority of Sharks are technically not endangered, and it is probably also true that finning is not the principal reason for their demise.

But that's obviously just quote mining.
It remains true that the current extent of Shark fishing is completely unsustainable and that it poses a grave risk for marine ecosystems. And it also remains true that whereas many non-Asian nations fish for Sharks and partake in the Shark fin trade, much of the fishing is driven by the overwhelmingly Asian demand for Shark fins, and that those fins are being used to make the soup. And I certainly very much doubt that most sharks are caught in European nations!

The way I see it, it behooves us to rectify that article and to ensure that the facts are presented objectively.

Solutions?
I'm technically WAY out of my depth here - but is there some whiz kid that knows how to change a Wikipedia article and make those changes stick? Happy to intermediate contacts to somebody credible who can draft a proper wording - just write to the dive shop!

Tuna Wars!

Right...

Remember the posts about the Pacific Tuna Industry?
First the whistleblower video by Greenpeace and then the appalling evidence that purse seiners are using Whale Sharks as FADs?

But, is it really true?
Well, check out this website.

Interesting huh.
To me, it's all déjà vu, very much on the lines of the present appalling climate change denialism. Seen it all before 30-40 years ago, see below.