Is it soup yet?

California is considering a ban on the sale of shark fins which is a delicacy and used in a traditional Chinese soup. Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii have already banned  shark fin sales. Some ethnic Chinese see the ban as an attack on their culture in which shark fin soup is traditionally served at weddings costing as much as $100 a bowl to impress guests.

The problem is that centuries ago when shark fin soup became popular, sharks were not easy to catch. Presumably that's where the tradition came from.  It was a delicacy because it wasn't readily available. Now however, sharks are being efficiently and easily hunted to extinction. Tens of millions of sharks (yes you read that correctly) are killed annually to feed the market for their fins.  In this fishing business sharks are caught, their fins cut off, and their dead bodies thrown back into the ocean. Sharks face extinction due to overfishing. What then will replace shark fin soup?

At the top of the marine food chain sharks are essential to the health of our oceans. You can't say the same thing about shark fin soup. Not one soul will perish due to a shortage of shark fins.  Yet, should sharks become extinct the whole ecology of our oceans could change dramatically.  Just how is unknown.

I may be taken for a cultural Neanderthal but I think that protecting the oceans for the world profoundly overwhelms anyone's "need" for shark fin soup. Sharks typically bear only one or two pups a season which naturally keeps their numbers low and hampers their ability to rebound from overkill. The species as a whole cannot survive the Chinese taste for this soup.

Sadly, I can no longer eat some of my traditional meals. It may seem that my heritage and traditions aren't important or as widely followed. But you would be wrong.  I grew up eating pot roast, gravy and mashed potatoes at one grandmother's house and traditional southern fried chicken and gravy and corn bread at my other grandmother's house (but no okra, too slimy). I can't eat like that anymore. My doctor hints that I might just drop dead one day eating such meals. So we have devised other traditional meals for health reasons. Our day to day eating habits have also changed to reflect current advances in nutritional knowledge.  Of course that changes daily but we gamely try to eat a healthy diet without too much planetary destruction.

Really and truly no one will drop dead if traditional meals are changed and updated to reflect current realities. The whole world shouldn't have to pay the cost for one group's antiquated tradition. It's simply too high.