More on shark fins

I would like to comment on Rajesh Menon`s letter titled Sharks and the environment in The Jakarta Post of July 23.

Overpopulation of sharks and a sustainable marine ecosystem are not about the killing of 5.4 humans per year but about predator and prey within a sustainable marine ecosystem and food chain.

On average a shark yields about four kg of dried uncooked fin (including its tail part), whose value is about US$ 1000 and is enough for about 400 servings. The alleged 100 million sharks killed annually, according to seashepherd website, yield about 400,000 tons of dried shark fin at a value of about $100 billion, or enough for 40 billion servings, or 22 servings per head per year for the population of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao and all 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Shark fin worth $100 billion would be 10 percent of China's gross domestic product (GDP) or about 20 percent of combined ASEAN GDP.

If seashepherd claims that 100 million sharks are killed annually, the wildaid website claims that 8000 tons of shark fin are shipped around the world. A total of 8000 tons of shark fin would require about two million sharks.

The wild estimates and large discrepancies speak volumes about the wild fantasy and prejudice of people like Rajesh Menon. Apart from their wild estimates and fantasy, there is a wrongly assumed causal relationship between shark fin consumption and the wanton destruction of sharks. Indiscriminate longline fishing, mammoth factory trawling and destruction of the food chain are the real culprits.

Rajesh Menon had better read the Newsweek report of July 14 again, more carefully this time. Education and thinking with proper reasoning, rather than belief in heresy and fantasy will, as they have always done, help enlighten Rajesh Menon.

SIA KA-MOU, Jakarta

Note: With this letter we close the debate on the shark fins issue.

--Editor