https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaZjmT8mHbU

Each second that goes by 3 sharks are being killed due to shark fin soup. The sharks that are captured are strung on board a boat, their fins are chopped off, and they are thrown back in the water to either bleed out slowly and painfully, or to suffocate. Some sharks need to swim to breathe while others can breathe without moving. The lucky ones die within a couple days, while the others take weeks to finally suffocate or bleed out. Imagine your arms and legs cut off, and your mouth duct taped. You sit there and endure the pain without being able to scream for help, until you finally bleed out. Luckily, humans would die much faster than sharks. Sharks play a very important role in our oceans and without them they would never be the the same. 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean, and oceans contain 99% of the Earth’s living space and a huge amount of biodiversity. Scientists believe that there are approximately 240,000 marine species that live in the ocean. We rely on the oceans for much of our food, economy, and professions. Shark fin soup has been destroying the ocean that we know and love. The soup they make out of the shark fins is just chicken broth and shark fins. The soup has absolutely 0 health benefits, in fact it is very bad to ingest shark due to it's high mercury content. The United States Environmental protection agency advises women and young children to avoid eating it. Shark fins are also often treated with hydrogen peroxide in order to make their color more appealing to consumers. Not really the type of thing you should be eating if you are concerned about your health. Some may argue that it is beneficial because of the anti-cancer properties of a shark. In reality, sharks still get cancer just as humans do, and they have no benefit to be ingested. Many myths about the benefits of killing and eating sharks have arose over the past decade, but the truth is most of the things we hear about sharks are false. Most would argue that shark fining isn't greatly effecting our oceans or the shark population because of the high price and low amount of consumers. This is entirely false, sharks take 7 to 14 years to reach maturity and be able to reproduce, therefore they take a long time to recover from over fishing. Just a few bowls of shark fin soup accounts for one dead shark, so it doesn't take much imagination to see the devastating impact that this menu choice is having on shark populations. 11,417 sharks are killed per hour, that's about 3 sharks PER SECOND. The damage we are doing to their population is huge, and if we do not do something soon it will be too late. Because sharks balance out our ecosystem, if we took them out of the equation the effect would be an ocean covered entirely in dead coral and algae. Sharks eat moderately big fish, and those fish eat smaller fish, the smaller fish eat algae off corals to help the corals survive and this keeps our ecosystem balanced. Once you take the sharks out of the equation you will have an over abundance of big fish, which means the tiny fish will start to disappear, leaving algae ridden dead coral for miles. Imagine swimming in disgusting, algae ridden swamp-like water rather than the ocean we've grown to know and love. Pretty gross, huh? Some other myths that have been floating around since the beginning of time are how dangerous sharks are to humans. Sharks in fact and little to NO threat what so ever to humans, in fact, we are the major threat for them. On average, there are 16 shark attacks PER YEAR in the United States with one fatality every TWO YEARS. We are scared of something so dangerously misinterpreted and misunderstood due to misinformation our whole lives. The only reason a shark attacks even occur is because they mistake you for a seal or other food they enjoy, or because of unclear water. Sharks do not enjoy human flesh or the taste of us and we assume they are these vicious predators that are here to kill us when in reality if you go in the ocean you are most likely feet/yards away from a shark at any given time. They are uninterested in us and WAY more scared of us than we are of them.

What we are doing to sharks is sick and even if you don't care about sharks it is greatly effecting us in the end. How can we let this continue? YOU can make a difference, and YOU can be the difference between saving a sharks life and letting this continue to happen. Please sign my petition to get this soup banned, or we might not ever see a shark again.