Shark Fin Soup Research Paper

1. About shark fin soup

The history of shark fin soup. It’s told that it was created by an emperor in the Ming Dynasty. The soup was supposed to show the power, wealth and generosity of the emperor to the banquet guests – and today serving of the dish has come to be a sign of respect.

It is often served at special occasions such as wedding and important business deals, and in the Chinese culture it’s a strong virtue of “sharing your fortune”. Previous generations who emigrated and later struggled with poverty and segregation now serve the shark fin soup to show how their hard work paid of and they now are able to share that with their family. So as the standards of living improved for a lot of Chinese in the late 18th and early 19th centuries

They only reach reproductive age as late as 12-15 years, and combined with the fast pace they are disappearing they are not able to recover the population.
As of now 74 shark species are listed as threathened, and 11 of them are critically endendegerd, on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

3. The price for shark fin soup
To make the worlds most expensive soup, inhumane killing of sharks are happening at several places around the world, its not just focused around China. Since the shark fins are second most valuable illegal trade, after drugs , the hunting is done around the world and the fins are sent to China and other countries where the Asian traditions exist.
Tens of millions of sharks are every year facing a slow death because of finning. The shark is caught and they remove the fins and then throw it back into the ocean – still alive. The death is often in the end caused by starvation, being eaten by other fish or drowning since they can no longer be in constant movement and therefor not extract oxygen from the water.

This long tradition has now led to some shark populations being declined to up to 98% in the last fifteen