Avoid endangered fish and help save them from extinction 
The Universe
(November 12, 2006)
A video made on the open sea by Greenpeace is bloody and gruesome. It shows a Japanese ship hauling in huge sharks, cutting off the fins and tails and throwing the writhing suffering creature back into the ocean to be devoured by other sharks.
A total waste of a magnificent creature and all just to make a bowl of soup. The craze for the delicacy in Asia alone is decimating the already-dwindling stocks of sharks in the world’s oceans.
But it is not only sharks that are suffering. In the North Atlantic, the fishing fleets of Spain, Britain and Ireland and other European countries had depleted the fish stocks by over-fishing to the point where many species are close to extinction.
Environmental protection groups in Britain are calling on consumers to refrain from buying endangered fish and asking shops not to stock it.
There are 20 varieties of endangered fish in the North Atlantic alone, the Marine Conservation Society says. Haddock, cod, skate and tuna are all on the list of vulnerable species. It has a book, The Good Fish Guide which tells us the best (not endangered) fish to buy.
The power of the people lies in their pockets. To buy or not to buy a particular product is what quickly changes the minds of profit-driven businesspeople who are financing the industry with no concern for the future.
A new startling, and frightening, report says that in 40 years’ time, there will be a total wipe out of fish on a global scale. We are consuming the sources that feed us the healthiest food of all. Instead of carefully practicing conservation and sustainable development and harvesting of fish, we are destroying the stocks.
In Asia, the price for the Sharks fins is astronomical - a cool $10,000 for the tail fin from a basking shark. Wealthy customers pay as much as $100 a serving for the delicacy, but at a terrible cost to the entire species. The population of thresher sharks has fallen by 75 per cent in 15 years because of the plundering of God’s oceans. Blue sharks and hammer heads in the pacific and southern oceans are also endangered.
In the poorer Asian countries, millions of people depend on fishing to live. They have small boats, big families and they are just subsistence fisher folk - they live on their daily catch.
Nowadays, many face hunger and even starvation. They fish all day and all night and catch nothing.
The fishermen of Galilee would be shocked if they saw the huge ships and massive nets that trawl the seas and scoop up all the fish. Most are then destroyed and thrown back because they have no commercial value.
The warming of the oceans is also causing problems to the fish that breed and feed in waters of exact temperature and so they face an immediate threat - the waters heat up and their eggs can perish. Their reproduction cycle is fatally damaged.
Amid all this doom and there is a chance that we can stop this destruction by using our buying power.
No one will work a miracle for the poor fishermen unless we do – the consumers of fish. This is what fair trade is all about. It guides consumers into making the right choices based on ethical and moral codes and criteria. Not only is it good for the producers but good for the consumers.
We are the guardians of the planet; we have responsibility to guard and protect this environment that sustains our lives. To allow it to be destroyed is truly a “sin of the world”.
It is a situation that needs to be remedied and perhaps prayer and fasting from the endangered species is a good way to start being accountable for what God has given us. [End]
