73 million is more sharks than I would have thought even existed.
An excerpt.
Editorial: One deadly soup
Shark kill for fins worse than thought
- Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, November 1, 2006
As many as 73 million sharks are killed every year just for their fins, just for a bowl of soup. That's the disturbing conclusion of new research by the Imperial College of London. The researchers appear to have done a more accurate job of estimating the shark harvest than the United Nations.
While sharks have a macabre allure as deadly predators, they themselves are prey. At least a sixth of the species are threatened -- in the name of fine dining. Shark fin soup is a delicacy that can cost $100 a bowl in an upscale Chinese restaurant.
The world's largest auction of shark fins is in Hong Kong. The London researchers went there to calculate from the number of fins sold the number of sharks killed. The estimate: Somewhere between 26 million and 73 million sharks, with a combined weight in excess of 2 million tons, are killed every year for their fins. That is about five times the official estimate by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, a calculation based largely on the legal fishing of sharks. The London researchers' estimates suggest that unregulated and illegal poaching of the sharks, however, is a much larger trade than the legal one.
