Hong Kong and China are the chief importers of shark fins for the creation of shark fin soup, and people come from far and wide for the dish. This means that shark fins are a popular demand.
Every year, about 100 million sharks are brutally murdered and of these 100 million, an estimated 73 million to 100 million of the deaths are results of shark finning, the process in which a shark’s fin is cut off and the shark is thrown back into the ocean to die. If this continues at the rate it is at right now, all 440 species of sharks may be extinct within the next decade or two. The population of sharks as a whole has already dropped 95% since the 1970s, simply due to finning.
We need to preserve our ocean's wildlife and make it so that our grandchildren will be able to visit sharks in their local aquarium, not through dusty, old library books.