Sharks

Today is the International Day for Biological Diversity. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but put simply it’s a day officially set aside to celebrate the world’s wealth of wildlife. For 2014 the theme is Island Biodiversity.

Tuna are fish, and they are wild animals. But to many people, they are simply understood as food. It can be a bit confusing when the short hand of ‘tuna’ is used, as it covers a whole family of species, from the relatively-tiddly and widespread skipjack, right up to the majestic but beleaguered bluefins.

Here’s a question which has cropped up from some supporters about our work on tinned tuna.

‘Why are sharks, turtles and rays more important than tuna?’

There’s nothing defensible about shark finning. It’s the marine equivalent of the poachers who kill rhinos to hack off their horns or kill elephants to hack off their tusks. It’s not dissimilar to killing bears or tigers for spurious ‘traditional’ cures either. But it happens out at sea, to animals which don’t have big brown eyes, and which aren’t usually touted as cuddly toys or ‘adoptable’. They rarely win public polls on favourite animals, yet they fill column inches every silly scaremongering summer season in the tabloids.