Shark Safe Restaurants / Stores

• A fish out of water! - San Francisco Protest
  
  
        
  
  
  Issues:
  
  The main focus of the Shark Safe Restaurant campaign is Shark Fin Soup. This dish began as a Chinese delicacy consumed only by royalty. It is now served in Asian restaurants throughout Asia and he world, and its popularity has exploded along with the growth of the economy and middle class in China. The demand for shark fin soup has driven rampant, often illegal over fishing of sharks. It has also led to the development of the brutal and wasteful practice of finning, in which the animal's fins are cut off and the shark's body is thrown back into the ocean - still alive - and left to sink and drown.
  
  The over-fishing of sharks driven by demand for Shark Fin Soup is the leading cause of the dramatic decline in shark populations around the world. It is totally unsustainable, and the practice of finning is wasteful and cruel. Many shark species are now threatened with extinction and governments have been slow to react to this ecological disaster.
  
  Some restaurants and grocery stores also sell shark steaks. As laws banning the practice of finning become more prevalent, we may see more of an effort by seafood distributors to market shark meat to mainstream restaurants.
  
  Another problem is that shark meat is often sold under misleading names, such as flake, rock salmon, smoked fish strips, dried cod/stockfish or used in fish and chips, imitation crab and other seafood items that don't specify the type of fish used. (New poll, report - Spanish unwittingly eat shark - http://www.sharkalliance.org/content.asp?did=32889)
  
  Goals:
  
  1. Immediate Goal is to educate the local community - consumers and restaurants - of the dangers of consuming shark fins and shark meat and the devastation that over fishing of sharks is causing to our oceans.
  
  2. Long-term goal will be to have city ordinances passed to prohibit the import and distribution of all shark products in cities nationwide and around the world.
  
  
  
  
  Find more videos like this on Year Of The Shark 2009
  
  
  Action Plan:
  
  Materials:
  
  Additional Information and Resources:
  
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