Kerrisdale,

I have to agree with you on this perversion of the Japanese, and their unending rape of the sea....I love seafood just as much as most people do, but to catch or purchase all the shark fins that they can get, just to make their expensive soup, and then throw the finless sharks (still alive) back into the sea, is a great travesty!

The Japanese will cause the shark population of the world to become extinct soon....The sea needs its predators to be able to keep an ecological balance, or else other species will suffer. (just like reintroducing wolves back into Yellowstone Park)

They also still hunt whales, supposedly for scientific purposes, but all the whale meat goes to the restaurants anyway...at a tremendous profit to the whaling companies....what a joke! and they keep trying to tell the rest of the world that they need to study the anatomy the the whales....as if they don't know what a whale is like on the inside!

The trouble is that when somebody creates a market for a commodity, such as shark fins, rain forrest lumber or drugs...some other person will find that commodity and sell it to them. If the Japanese didn't want the shark fins so bad, then there wouldn't be a demand for them...and the Ecuadorian fishermen would be catching shrimp instead of destroying the sharks which are a more important link in the food chain!

Well, I guess I'm through with my rant and venting, but this is one point that has always stuck in my craw when it comes the world ecology...just like killing the elephants for their tusks, or the rhinos for their horns, so that some rich human can say that they possess such an item, or have tasted an endangered species.

(I have always thought that Bald Eagles taste better than Spotted Owls)

A Rant from the Bilges,

Long for Cash