Wow, it’s been almost a year since my last blog post. I’ve been so busy with work and other things that it’s been difficult to keep up. But a recent trip to Australia really got me thinking about how I miss blogging and sharing ideas on how to stay green and environmentally friendly. So from now on I’m going to try to start blogging again.
Part of my Australian adventure consisted of three days aboard a boat that took us to the Great Barrier Reef. In three days Lillian (my sister from another mother) and I scuba dove nine times and snorkeled once. Life under water is just so incredible and diverse; we saw tons of coral, fish, turtles, and even sharks. YES – SHARKS! We saw a few reef sharks while doing a night dive. I was definitely very scared at first. With my heard pounding and the Jaws theme song thumping in my head, I just kept telling myself to calm down because I didn’t want the sharks to sense my fear. I remember looking at the sharks just a few feet away from me, wondering when it was going to attack me. But it didn’t. The sharks just swam around the water, just like all the other fish around us. After being in the water with the sharks for a few minutes, my fear slowly disappeared. I realized that these sharks didn’t want anything to do with us. These sharks didn’t try to eat us or even try to come anywhere close to us – they did their own thing while we did ours. What an exhilarating feeling.
The real impetus that inspired me to blog again happened on the plane ride back from Australia. I watched a documentary called Sharkwater. In this documentary, filmmaker Rob Stewart showed footage of himself swimming with hammer-head sharks in attempt to debunk the stereotype that sharks are dangerous man-eating monsters. He explains how sharks are actually imperative to the eco-system. But the crux of the documentary was exposing the corruption of the shark-finning industry. Every year, tens of millions of sharks are caught, their fins are cut off, and then they are thrown back into the water to die a slow death. In many countries shark finning is illegal, but the black market is booming due to many Asian mafia groups. At this rate, sharks are on their way to extinction.
I’m not going to lie – I have had shark fin soup before. Asians love this stuff. They think it’s some kind of panacea and will pay an exorbitant amount of money for this gelatinous thing that only tastes good after adding chicken or beef broth. But after scuba diving with sharks and watching this documentary, I will never touch shark fin soup again. I’ve learned that sharks are beautiful creatures that really do not want to harm humans, and it’s really the other way around. Some stats I’ve learned from my trip and additional research:
Average number of worldwide deaths caused by shark attacks per year: 4
Average number of deaths caused by lightning strikes per year: 38
Average number of shark deaths caused by humans per year: Between 70 and 100 million
Last year Hawaii’s House of Representatives passed a bill banning the sale, possession, and trade of any type of shark fin or shark fin product, and California’s legislature is currently debating a similar bill. I find it very interesting since there are large Asia populations in both Hawaii and California that are against the ban. I know it’s part of Asian culture to have shark fin soup, but we have to get with the times. Sharks are at the top of the ocean’s eco-system, and if they disappear, who knows what kind of mess will become of life under water.
Watch the trailer for Rod Stewart’s documentary, Sharkwater. You can watch the entire documentary on YouTube too.
