Tag: shark

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Put The Shark Fin Down…

Would you like a shark fin or two?Today is the day all the animal welfare people have been waiting for and the Chinese traditionalists have loathed. As of today it is officially illegal to engage in the trade of shark fins within California.

Specifically this will hit Los Angeles and San Francisco the hardest so I’ll focus on San Francisco because I suppose we hear about it more here.

Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy by the Chinese and served to celebrate births, weddings, nowadays pretty much any celebration comes with shark fin soup, or at least it did until AB 376 was passed. This caused quite a brou-ha-ha within the Chinese community with cries of racism being throw around like the shark fins themselves. While being seen as an attack specifically against the Chinese which is actually more collateral damage since the Chinese are the only ones who eat it, it was more about saving the wildlife of our oceans, mainly the top of the food chain predators of the ocean — sharks.

AB 376 was passed because there was a huge amount of sharks, including endangered species of sharks being harvested to make the delicacy with no taste. In some cases there has been a 90% reduction in the population of sharks who’s fins and only fins are used for the soup. No other dish uses shark fins and the less economically feasible rest of the shark is worthless in comparison and is thrown back in the ocean allowing the finless shark to die.

If you’ve read my articles on the subject before you’ll noticed that I was called a racist by Senator Leland Yee’s twitter account along with several other lovers of shark fin soup who tweeted to me questions such as, what about sharkskin suits? They use shark [No they don’t. Sharkskin is a smooth worsted fabric with a soft texture and a two-toned woven appearance. No sharks are harmed in the making of a sharkskin suit]. Shark meat that was said to be sold at Costco and other food outlets was shown not be sold any longer and it’s next to impossible to find shark meat for sale anymore.

Because of the ban going into affect today there has been a few more articles on the subject noting that the stores and restaurants who still have stock on hand were trying to unload it before today with everything from a Father’s Day 20% discount to $999/lb to discounted shark fin soup with a whole chicken for $138.

In one article I did find information on why this delicacy with no taste because popular. It dates back to ancient China when killing a shark took some major cojones or however one says cojones in Mandarin or Cantonese. To show off your masculine prowess by killing a shark meant you had to get your hands dirty and risk your life. So after risking your life you have to show off to guests by making them eat it. Makes me think of something along the lines of, I had to work hard for this food so you’re going to eat it. Kind of like something your parents would say to you when you were a kid, but in this case you were celebrating the prowess of the shark killer by consuming the flesh of the animal that would have consumed the flesh of your host. Now I’m thinking of some of the hunters I know and that works out pretty similar.

There’s a difference here you have to take into account. It doesn’t take any physical prowess to ask, how much is that shark fin in the window? The whole ceremony behind eating shark fin soup has been lost today and in some ways that’s a shame. I’d like to see how much a person really wants a cornerstone of their culture if someone hands them a knife and points to the ocean and says, help yourself.

I have to admit that I am no vegetarian and a far cry from it, but when I was a Boy Scout and handed a live rabbit and tossed into the woods over night the rabbit got to run free and I was a vegetarian for the night. It might have been different had I been stranded for more than a couple of weeks, but I could go a night without meat. Most of us that were raised in cities don’t have the hunter instinct anymore so the idea of you’ve got to kill it before you grill it is lost on us. I can understand the original reasons why it became a delicacy and that also helps explain why someone would want to eat something that’s tasteless. It’s not about what it tasted like, but how you got it and that part has been lost in today’s Westernized culture.

I enjoy cultural traditions and do think that in San Francisco the retaining of cultural traditions should remain. You also have to keep in mind though that there are some cultural traditions that need to change. Slavery was an American cultural tradition at one time. There are many cultures that cannibalism was a cultural tradition as well, but they had to be let go. I’m sure the Chinese have more cultural traditions to focus on than one that has been destroying the natural eco-system of our planet to support a cultural tradition that is outdated and anachronistic.

On the other hand, here’s a knife, there’s ocean. Have at it.

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Where Have All The Fish Geeks Gone?

Home AquariumI was looking back in time yesterday when I turned on the lights of my old sturdy 55 gallon fish tank. The fish had finally all died off after close to 15 years and there were just plants in the tank that didn’t need too much light so I had left the light off to save a bit of money [note, even if I left the lights on it would only cost 11¢/day] and I started to wonder where all the aquarium people had gone to?

Granted, I’ll have to take a step back in time to the 80’s and 90’s when I was involved with the San Francisco Aquarium Society. I wasn’t just involved, but I was the President for four years and on the Board of Directors for eight. The original story is linked above. Back then when I got involved with the SFAS, it when from a casual 50 members which we might get 20 to show up to over 500 members and we would be able to pack the old auditorium at the Academy of Sciences. I became known for being a fish geek. I would get calls from newspapers and local stations would have me be on a show to talk about the popularity of aquariums. I was on a trip in the 90’s to London and while walking around the London Aquarium I asked one of the workers about one of the tank set ups and after a couple of minutes was recognized and got the full behind the scenes tour of the aquarium [it’s good to be the fish geek].

Back then there were loads of aquarium stores around the city some small some huge [R.I.P. Nippon Aquarium] and you could find fish from all over the world available to you. The aquarium clubs had all the interesting fish that you’d never see anywhere else. In addition to the SFAS, there was also the Pacific Coast Cichlid Association, the Bay Area Killifish Association and the just started Bay Area Aquatic Plant Association. They’re all still around, but they aren’t as big a pull as they used to be.

Needs a little work don't it?Back then we had the true fish geeks who would have home setups that would rival some public aquariums. They would breed fish, sometimes producing strains that you hadn’t seen in the hobby. Many of these people were breeding fish that had come from collections years ago of fish that were endangered [I’ve seen more Devil’s Hole Pupfish bred in home tanks than there are in the Death Valley]. Those of us who bred fish back then could bring some into the meetings and easily leave with $100 in our pocket to spend over the weekend. My goal back then was when I retired I would breed fish and sell them at the club meetings to supplement my income. I had a friend who was importing plants and selling them to the stores around the Bay Area while he was living out of his car for awhile. He built a nice nest egg for himself and I thought I would too.

Now, that’s not so much the case. Fish I could have gotten $20-$30 for a pair are now selling for $5 for three pairs at some club meetings. The public shows such as the SFAS show at Tanforan every year is gone. It seems that people don’t think about home aquariums as much anymore. They’re easier to take care of than cats and dogs. True, they won’t curl up on your lap [unless you keep eels in a tank next to your bed. True story], but they do have personalities and a nice lush tank has been shown to lower blood pressure and give people well, warm fuzzy feelings. You can get into it as much as you want. You can start with a small 10 gallon tank and then move up to home installation if you get really into it.  The SFAS Home Shows were where people got to show off what they did with their tanks and gave the rest of us ideas to build on. There were a few people who always tried to out do everyone else. One friend who passed on had a 250 gallon coffee table with small sharks swimming around [no lasers on the sharks though].

I strongly recommend people try out aquariums at least once to see if they like them. The aquarium fish trade could use a boost and it would be great to bring it back in San Francisco.

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Leland Yee: Outraged over animal abuse, but not shark abuse

I received an email from Senator Leland Yee yesterday about his outrage of the funding of a $750,000 grant for a Brooklyn artist to create sculptures for Muni who in the 70’s made a film where he made an art film in which he adopted a dog and chained it to a fence and then shot the dog.

I have to admit that I had heard of the film, but never saw it, but not only am I disgusted by the idea of this film, but so was the man who made it. He remarked that what he did was wrong and it was the stupidity of his youth that made him unable to see the bigger picture, yet at the same time, we have a California state Senator who while being disgusted by the shooting of a dog, sees nothing wrong with the dismembering of a shark and throwing its writhing, living body back into the ocean to die as being a Chinese cultural tradition.

To quote Senator Yee from his email:

This week, Ed Lee and the SFMTA approved spending $750,000 of taxpayer money on a central subway contract for Brooklyn artist Tom Otterness, who made a 1977 film in which he chained a dog to a fence and then shot and killed that dog on camera.

Yes, you read that correctly. He chained a dog to a fence and then shot and killed that dog.

This is a completely unacceptable use of taxpayer dollars.

I woke up early this morning to find a youtube video had been sent to me by an old friend of mine, Dave King. This is a video of Chef Gordon Ramsey tasting Shark Fin Soup for the first time to see what all the fuss was about. Not only do you get a chef’s analysis of the soup, but Ramsey also goes out to see how the shark fins are acquired. Warning for those friends of mine who are defenders of animal rights, while sharks aren’t all warm and fuzzy like a dog or a cat [which also happen to be eaten as a part of “traditional Chinese culture”  in China that I have written about before] this video does show the finning of sharks, in which case you might want to stop the video after Chef Ramsey leaves the restaurant.

Senator Yee, who is a candidate for mayor of San Francisco [which I might add he filed for just a week after being re-elected as Senator of California] has a problem with animal abuse as long as the animal being abused isn’t a shark. He talks about how shark meat is available everywhere, yet you can’t find it anywhere and the basis if AB 376 is an attack on “Traditional Asian Culture” when Chinese citizens are the only Asians who consume shark fin soup. In reality, this email isn’t an attack on a man who shot a dog, but an attack upon another fellow Chinese citizen of San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee. While as you all know I am not in favor of our interim Mayor running for re-election because it goes against the promise he had made that he would not run for re-election, I also do not like the focus that our Chinese candidates for Mayor are using to focus on getting the Chinatown vote. While Chinese make up 33% of San Francisco’s population, only 18% of them actually vote and the majority of the Chinese population isn’t living in Chinatown, but the majority of non-voting Chinese is.

Supervisor John Avalos and Attorney Dennis Herrera are making huge jumps in polls because of the fact that they are focusing on the population of San Francisco, not a small eight block area of San Francisco. We need a Mayor that will focus on all of the districts to bring about change. From the Sunset to the Bayview, from the Mission to North Beach and yes, also Chinatown, but not appearing to be only in favor of helping Chinatown.

Now with that being said, on to the movie:

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AB376 passes! On to the Governor!

I was informed by the California Director of the Humane Society of the United States Jennifer Fearing yesterday that AB376 passed through the senate 25-9 and now proceeds to the Governor for final sign off to be made a law making California partner with Washington, Oregon and Hawaii on the ban on the sale or possession of shark fins.

To me this is great. In our oceans the sharks are the top of the food chain. We kind of take the food chain for granted. On land, humans are considered to be the top of the food chain. 90% of  the shark population has been decimated by shark finning. If  90% of the human population was decimated by some sort of fate how do you think we would be living? Not too well is my suspicion. The food chain is much more fragile than a chain and when you remove the majority of the top of the food chain it becomes destabilized and starts to fall apart.

This can be seen in parts of the world where animals not from the area have been introduced. Crops fail, livestock dies and people go hungry. Shark is not a popular fish to eat and hasn’t been for almost two decades. Sharks because of their nature living in salt water do not excrete urine and their flesh when caught has a very strong ammonia content making them difficult to prepare. Their flesh is also high in mercury making them and their fins unsafe to eat.

As expected there were a few people against the ban. To quote our local Senator Leland Yee’s comments on the subject:

the bill would not save a single shark because there is no ban on taking the rest of the body other than the fin.

If it won’t save a single shark, then why not vote on it? His logic is fueled by the idea that people still eat shark meat. They pretty much don’t. Chefs are even working now to come up with a substitute for shark fin in the mostly tasteless shark fin soup because it should be more ecologically sound to reproduce a tasteless dish than to destroy our oceans to preserve a tradition that only one type of people enjoy. Shred up some tofu and add some dried shaved tuna flakes to the broth. I am truly sorry that this bill does seem aimed at Chinese people who eat shark fin soup to celebrate at weddings or the birth of a child. It does seem like a cultural attack, but it is an attack on a practice that is destroying our oceans for a small piece of meat that is high in uric acid and mercury. Doing away with this dish will probably bestow longevity on the Chinese people who previously consumed the dish.

I was at my doctor’s office a few years ago and thought I was reading an episode of Time magazine when I realized it was China Today and noted an article on the Chinese fighting against the cultural tradition of eating dogs. You would think it was an attack by PETA to see the pictures,  but these were Chinese citizens who would rather pet dogs than pot them.

Cultural traditions change over time. White people once owned slaves, but they do not anymore. Chinese once bound the feet of their women to make them attractive, but they do not anymore. Shark fin soup has had it’s time and should not be relegated to the history books. California is the 2nd largest consumer of shark fin soup outside of China and is fastly rising to the number one position. Even China is backing away from shark fin soup.

In my travels around San Francisco it is common for Chinese restaurants to post their menus in the window and so far I have only a small number that serves shark fin soup. I’ll admit that I haven’t been to Chinatown that probably has more, but that’s only a supposition on my part. It does seem a bit strange though that there was such a big fight to uphold a Chinese cultural tradition that is rather hard to find.

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AB 376 Passes! What That Means For San Francisco

I received a tweet today from Mike Kwan who posted the petition on change.org to show Senator Leland Yee that people in California and specifically San Francisco are in favor of AB376 which bans the sale or possession of shark fins. It regarded Fiona Ma, former Supervisor of District 4 [the Sunset District] and Assemblywoman serving San Francisco’s position on, as they say on twitter, #sharkfinning.

I knew already that Fiona Ma was opposed to AB376, but she’s not running for anything this year so I decided to leave her alone since there’s really nothing my words can do at the moment. Although I would like to talk to her about her measure as Supervisor of District 4 that would have all of the overhead wires moved underground by 2010. I did find a few things that should be noted. These are things that have nothing to do with any election in San Francisco, but they show the way a person thinks which should be taken into consideration when you vote for a person. If the person shows intelligence, that is good, when a person shows ignorance, that is bad. Fiona Ma showed a bit of ignorance which she tried to cover up by stating:

Over 25 years ago I made a personal choice to give up eating meat. I would not consider a law that imposes my personal choice on the rest of California. Indeed we don’t have any laws that ban foods in California.

We have 2 Federal and California agencies who monitor and seek to protect our endangered species through permits, regulations, quotas and enforcement. If sharks are threatened as a species, we should ban the killing of all sharks.

I have been concerned about the abhorrent practice of shark finning since 1998 and I applauded President Clinton when he signed the Shark Finning Prohibition Act in 2000 banning the practice in US waters (which extends 200 nautical miles from the coastline) and required the entire shark (carcass and fin) be brought onto US land.  In Jan of this year, I was pleased that President Obama signed the Shark Conservation Act that strengthened the federal law and closed some of the loopholes in the 2000 Act.

The National Marines Fisheries Service closely monitors the shark population and adjusts the annual quota for bringing in certain types of shark each year. This list can be found on their website.

Good, she is against #sharkfinning. I applaud her for that. This is going quite well until I see the following paragraph:

Members, I Googled “Shark Meat California Restaurants.”  And yes I found lots of restaurants serving shark steaks.  And you don’t have to walk far on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills before you’ll find shark skin as an accessory item.

OK, I have to disagree here. Rodeo Drive isn’t all of California and I urge you all to drop Shark Meat California Restaurants you won’t see much of it, except the 8 Immortals Restaurant on Taraval in the Sunset District and that link doesn’t even mention shark meat. Even Shark Sushi doesn’t serve Shark Sushi. You won’t find many, if any places selling or serving shark meat because shark meat is already so laden with mercury that no one wants to eat it let alone the fact that shark meat is far more laborious to prepare, being high in ammonia. Then there’s the shark skin thing.

Shark skin is a fabric made of cotton to resemble the skin of a shark. Shark skin handbags and boots are a pattern applied to the readily accessible cow-hide to resemble shark skin, but there are no sharks involved. Fiona, we’ve met several times at public events, but you have got to do your research better. While I may seem like a tree hugging, crystal f*cking, goddess loving vegan hippie, I’m not. I like meat. I like it a lot. Beef, pork, chicken, the occasional fish, but that meat is domestically raised and if we all became vegetarians, cows, pigs and chickens would become extinct quickly. Fish might last a little longer.

So as we continue down to the end of the post Assemblywoman Fiona Ma states:

And lastly, this is a sensitive cultural issue to many in the Chinese community.  Sharks Fin Soup is considered an honored traditional delicacy and is served at many of our sacred occasions such as a birth of a child and the union of two people. To many in my community, this bill represents a direct attack on our culture and tradition.

I want to reiterate that this bill would be the first bill to ban a California food product AND takes us down a dangerous road where we dictate what is and isn’t acceptable for cultures to consume.

Members, I’d like to recognize the author [editor’s note: She is the author of this article] for taking on this real and controversial issue. I have been fairly silent to date hoping this bill could come to a compromise that would accomplish the intent of the author and not ban a piece of the Chinese culture.  Unfortunately we are not there and thus I am voting NO today. [editor’s note again: says the vegetarian who is against the “abhorrent practice of shark finning”]

Apparently Fiona Ma, along with Leland Yee haven’t read that 70% of the citizens of China along with the Pan Pacific American Ocean Harmony Association have decided that it is better to not consume shark fin soup. So while she and Leland Yee are against shark finning as a practice they are not in favor of AB376 which bans shark finning. I believe my Mother used to tell me, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t. This is political double-speak. The Asian community is against shark fin soup and leaving it behind.

California has a high Asian-American population with San Francisco being even higher, but in reality as Mike Kwan pointed out to me, it’s not an Asian thing, it’s a Chinese tradition. He’s right. Fiona Ma and Leland Yee are playing the Asian card to reach a broader audience to gain suppor making them think that all of California is against Asians. That’s not true. California showed today that we are against the brutal practice of ripping the fins of sharks and throwing their bodies back into the water. Not a single Asian is harmed in this process, but millions of sharks are.

Senator Yee stood up for the ban and foie gras, but did he think that the French would jump up in arms and play the race card? No. There is now a ballot in the next election to ban circumcision in San Francisco. Has Leland Yee stood up to gain the Jewish vote? No.

When you stand up to protect something by playing a race card you have lost the race. It shows to the public that you are in politics to help your own people and not THE people. When you are a politician in California and San Francisco your job is to serve all of the people all of the time. Create a new sacred, cultural tradition. Shark meat is not a desirable meat in the USA and saying that shark fin soup should be allowed if the entire shark is used does not provide enough of the fins for the people who have been wanting this outdated dish.

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Friday Shark Attack…

Well, I thought yesterday’s article would smooth things over a bit by posting a rational, not overly emotional piece aimed at the politics in San Francisco and to help Senator Leland Yee understand that his campaign people are ruining his shot by playing the race card for him as well as not understanding what misusing social media can do for you. I don’t know if my point hit home, but I did notice I received a lot of followers yesterday and one troll.

Apparently a twitter account using the name @alumcalbearsedu started to go on the warpath with myself and anyone else locally he/she/it could find that spoke out against shark finning as a racist. A few of the people being attacked surmised that this troll was a sock puppet of Leland Yee. If he indeed is I feel sorry for Mr. Yee. While this person is obviously a Leland Yee supporter, he has a chip on his shoulder that he is being attacked for being a Chinese minority. I looked up the ethnicity of San Francisco and the Bay Area and Asians came in as the second largest race [the green dots represent Chinese, not Asians in this link]. If you look at the previous link you’ll see that in the Sunset and Richmond districts, Chinese are the predominant race. Chinatown oddly enough shows more red [Caucasian] than green [Chinese]. Of the 189 and under group Asians actually make up the majority of population in the Bay Area. OK his point is shot down.

He then goes on to ask why is shark meat ok, but not the fins. It’s an attack on Chinese culture. Let’s drop that into google and see what comes up. Here are some shark meat suppliers. Not one is in the U.S. and they typically are providing dried shark meat, not something I’ve ever heard of American’s preparing. This got me interested in how shark meat is prepared because I have read it is high in uric acid and smells like ammonia. There’s an Icelandic dish of pressed dried shark meat that even made the host of Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern gag. Here is a suggestion as to how to prepare shark meat. Not very appetizing or sanitary in my opinion. Point two, shot down.

Then @alumcalbearsedu came back with, @baghdadbythebay Also check out eBay “shark skin” and “shark oil”. Tell me why they are not also being considered for banning? This one was easy. Shark skin isn’t made from shark. It’s a type of cloth or there is cow hide that is patterned with a shark skin look. Shark oil on the other hand has come under fire recently and is being placed in the ground rhino horn and tiger penis category as a mythological cure for everything. Strike three…you’re OUT!

Perhaps one of @alumcalbearsedu most telling comments was, @baghdadbythebay Ban the entire shark. Don’t single out the fins and make Chinese the escape goats to solving shark problem. Now the worst thing about this is that we have a person who claims to be an alumni of University of California, Berkeley that can’t put a simple sentence together. He has noted that only Chinese are affected by this and as stated yesterday 85% have decided to stop eating or diminish their consumption of shark fin soup in China which he hasn’t acknowledged. What we have here is a someone who is bullying people on Twitter who is doing so because he claims @baghdadbythebay Yes I am emotional about this. Chinese always gets bullied. Rush limbagh and Alexandra wallace… Ching chong chinks. So I guess he believes it’s ok to bully others if you feel you’ve been bullied. Why doesn’t he go after Rush Limbagh [sic] or Alexandra wallace [sic]?

This has lead me to create a PDF file for some grass roots politicking in San Francisco. I’ve never been one to do this, but it appears that Leland Yee’s campaign front is releasing trolls without doing anything to stop them. If you download this file, print it out and cut it into quarters and distribute it to any business that displays a Leland Yee for Mayor sign. It’s time we send him a message that he can’t straddle the fence on a topic that the majority of people are in favor of, included those of Chinese Ancestry…the passing of AB376 which would ban the sale of shark fins in California. This is an animal rights issue, not a race issue. Download PDF File.

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A Point of Clarification Regarding Leland Yee

I suppose I stepped a bit over the line the other day when I posted that Leland Yee called me a racist. He did, or should I say his twitter account did in a passive aggressive way infer that my dislike of shark finning to provide the main ingredient for the beloved shark fin soup was born out of racism by the use of the hash tag #racism. I really shouldn’t blame Leland directly. The post from his twitter account used the word He, not I so he’s not controlling it. I received a couple of hours after the post a phone call from Jordan Curley of Stearns Consulting that I did not answer. She did leave a message stating she was from the Leland Yee campaign asking me to call her back. I had chosen not to, but today after I get my work finished I will call her.

Jordan, expect my call. It would have been nice if she had said she was from Stearns Consulting, but I suppose consultants don’t like to be known as consultants, but would like to appear much more closer to the person they’re hired to promote. No matter, after finding her info on the site it will be a Caucasian to Caucasian discussion that I would find it hard for someone to bring up racism.

I admit that I may have emotionally over stepped myself in a way that my disgust at the practice of slicing the fins off of sharks and tossing the still live body back in to the water might have been perceived by Mr. Yee’s publicity juggernaut of people who have so much to wade through that they have to skim which probably led to the #racism hash tag. I don’t think that was right and I will stand by my disgust at shark finning. It is only done to provide the main ingredient for shark fin soup which is eating mostly by those of Chinese decent, but that does not make my comments I have posted an attack on the Chinese and their culture.

I being of Italian and Austrian decent would probably be up in arms if California wanted to place a ban on pasta, but only wheat dies in the making of pasta and no animal suffers during it’s making. I am sorry if my writings from the heart upset Jordan Curley and Mr. Yee’s aid, Adam Keigwin as they are the only ones who have confronted me on the issues [Adam via Twitter]. I have not yet received an email or phone call from Mr. Yee and I don’t expect to. I might run into him the next time I’m at the Tennesse Grill which he likes to frequent and if I see him I will introduce myself to him just to see if he knows who I am. I’m not sure he will.

This all started from my comments regarding a practice that I found appalling that was causing the decimation of species that is already threatened by an abundance of mercury in the waters that is making them even more unsuitable as a food source. As mentioned before, Costco hasn’t sold shark meat in over ten years because of people’s fear of mercury poisoning. Basketball great Yao Ming has done a TV commercial that 55% of the people of China have seen and is responsible for causing 85% of the people of China to say that they will stop or diminish their consumption of the soup. There has yet to be shown a proven way to sustainably provide the main ingredient for shark fin soup and there are chefs in the Bay Area who are even looking at ways to replace the main ingredient with more healthy alternatives. What we are seeing is a resurgence in the interest in shark fin soup made without the shark fins. It makes it more affordable and more healthy to humans and sharks. Mr. Yee, Mayor Lee and Fiona Ma [all California politicians with a San Francisco base], all I am asking is that you let go of something that even the majority of Chinese people don’t want anymore.

I suppose in this case that while I’m not a vegetarian in any way shape or form, I’m in league with seitan.

Jordan Curley Voice Mail

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A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

Apologies in advance for all of the quotes below, but I had an interesting event happen to me two nights ago that I wanted to wait a bit on before saying anything. I was just sitting at my computer checking twitter every so often and noticed that @JenniferFearing who works for the United States Humane Society sent the following tweet:

JenniferFearing Jennifer Fearing Good news: CA shark fin bill passes Asm cmte – headed 2 floor in coming wks. Call your Assemblymember 2 urge YES – AB 376.#stopsharkfinning

Now those of you who are regular readers of my site know I’m completely against shark finning so I re-tweeted the post with a hash tag of #lelandyee because he was opposed to AB376 because it would take away an ancient Chinese tradition [you know, like foot binding]. While I’m not that into politics I am into doing what I believe is right.
She then replied to my tweet with:
JenniferFearing Jennifer Fearing @baghdadbythebay Well, his office certainly was working hard today to hurt the bill’s chances.
To which I replied:
@JenniferFearing all that’s going to do is hurt his chances for mayor.#stopsharkfinning #lelandyee
And then the fun started to begin. More people started to get involved like Bill Wong:

@akeigwin @jenniferfearing @baghdadbythebay we care enuff not to use “culture” 2 peddle mercury-laden shark fins to elderly Asian Pacifics

and Jennifer Fearing shot back with:
JenniferFearing Jennifer Fearing Both = ban on cruelty RT @BillWongLLC: shark fin ban is no more attack on Chinese culture than Foie Gras ban was attack on French culture
Which lead to Adam Keigwin, who is Leland Yee’s Chief of Staff to jump in with:
AKiegwin Adam Kiegwin @BillWongllc @jenniferfearing @baghdadbythebay no but he does care about the 70 constituents who were present. You lobbyists don’t care?
Gee, I didn’t know I was a lobbyist and tweeted back that I was just a concerned citizen against the barbaric process of shark finning and preceded to get a number of message back from @akiegwin that seemed to be getting more irate as time went on. He knew I wasn’t a lobbyist and after the other’s stopped posting replies and it was only me I got the following from him:

AKiegwin Adam Kiegwin @BillWongllc @jenniferfearing @baghdadbythebay at least w/o u resorting to lies, distortion, and insults

Ouch, I think I hit a bit of a raw nerve there and those of you who have read my articles in the past know that I cited very credible sources for my information on shark finning and how when further analyzed the shark fins being sold in Chinatown where shown to be coming from endangered sharks as well as commercially legit sharks. Then something funny happened around 9pm. All of @akiegwin’s tweets about this to me disappeared from Twitter.
You can delete something you’ve tweeted with twitter, but apparently while the website and apps such as tweetdeck will eliminate them the twitter app for the iPhone doesn’t. So somewhere down the line Mr. Kiegwin received a phone call telling him to pull his tweets immediately. Apparently in checking out Twitter there were quite a few people who joined in on the discussion, but just didn’t include me and I suppose Senator Leland Yee doesn’t want any more bad publicity because in politics the concept of any news is good news doesn’t hold up.
I used to like Leland Yee and the fact that he could usually be found at the Tennesse Grill frequently, but when he came out in outrage over the supposed destruction of ancient Chinese culture by banning the sale of shark fins I realized that our next mayor has to be a mayor that serves the people, not just Chinese people. Granted, the largest race of people in San Francisco are Chinese, but everyone must be served equally.
I also learned something that can be more important. Smartphones have GPS tracking built in and unless you turn it off then the location from where you send a tweet from will be given out to the world. So if you’re going to piss someone off you might not want post your location if you’re doing it from home. Now I’ve got to go. My doorbell just rang.
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FinGate 2.0: Leland Yee

First off, I’d like to start by saying I haven’t seen FinGate anywhere before, so if any other news group uses the term I request that they use my name and a link back to this sight.

Now, onto the story. Last week Leland Yee proclaimed that the elimination of shark fin soup as an attack on ancient Chinese culture. The next day he held a conference serving shark fin soup to the media to show how wonderful and delicious it is.

Then apparently, Leland remembered how environmentally friendly the people of San Francisco Bay Area are. He sent out a rather waffly sounding email that says that while he condemns the finning of sharks, he opposes the ban on shark fins.

Well, I’ve done a little research and here’s a few things I’ve found:

  1. The industry that is involved with shark fishing that uses the entire shark does not supply enough fins to feed the shark fin soup lovers. Shark meat is rarely sold outside the Asian marketplace.
  2. While checking the DNA of shark fins available in San Francisco and Los Angeles more than half of the fins belonged to endangered sharks.
  3. While many other countries fish for sharks or use the finning method that California is trying to outlaw, the majority of all shark meat and all of the fins are sold to China and other Chinese markets
  4. According to research done by SharkWater, 100 million sharks  are finned yearly to supply the Chinese demand for shark fin soup and it’s use in Chinese cures.
  5. The finning of sharks is an unsustainable form of fishing with shark populations dropping severely around the world leaving the seas in an unbalanced state. According to a 2009 study shark populations have dropped 50%-75% due to shark finning. Some species have dropped by 90% in population over the past 20 years.
  6. 87 Countries exported their shark fin catch to Hong Kong and the USA in 2008. Not one kept a shark fin for their own consumption.
  7. Shark meat contains the highest level of mercury found in fish, well above the recommendations of the FDA.
  8. The health claims by Chinese that shark products can increase male vigor and prevent cancer have been proven to be the exact opposite. The high levels of mercury found in shark meat can cause impotence, sterility and cancer.
  9. Costco does not sell shark meat contrary to Leland Yee’s statement. Shark meat is loaded with uric acid and is quite smelly and unappealing and must be soaked for at least a day to leach the urine smell from its flesh.

Is eight reasons enough or need I say more? Apparently while my site is focused on San Francisco and has the most readers here I received a letter from a Shelly Cole in North Carolina:

Hi Eric,

My name is Shelly Cole and I live in Greensboro, NC….Tonight while perusing the net I ran across your blog from 2/16, “Waiter!  There’s a Shark Fin in My Soup!” .  Great blog!  Very well written.  I decided to check out Mr. Yee a bit to see who his is.  I despise hypocrisy!  My number one pet peeve is to be lied to!  I just can’t stand it.  If you lie to me…we’re done….or you at least better be hoping that we have a relationship that goes back for MANY MANY years.  You certainly won’t be trusted again any time soon, but you might not get booted out the door.  ‘Course…if you lied to me….you just might not care if you get booted out or not…

Anyway, after going to Mr. Yee’s sight, I couldn’t believe my eyes!  The hypocrisy!  AAAAGGHHH!!  So I decided to send him a note.  I thought you might be interested in reading it.  Not that I claim to write as well as you, but I hope he actually sees it and that I conveyed the point home to him in such a way that he not only gets it, but that he NEVER FORGETS IT!!  I copied your blog into the email so he’d know what he was getting creamed for, in the event that he hadn’t read your blog.  I intentionally left out the part of who wrote the blog, the name of the blog, or the blogs url.  If he hadn’t read it and then didn’t like it, I was sure how you would feel about unwanted/unsolicited attention that it might garner you from him or from his camp.  I hope you don’t mind my small attempt at “protecting” you.  I doubt I’ll hear back from him, but if I do and he wants to know who the blogger was and you want me to tell him, I’ll be happy to do so.  If you don’t want me to tell him….he’ll never hear it from me…..  😉

I was really very angry with him after having read both  his statement and your blog.  So….I let him know about it….

Sincerely,
Shelly Cole
Greensboro, NC

Thank you Shelly, I think Leland knows about me by now. 🙂 Apparently this is bothering more people than those in the SF Bay Area and they’re speaking up about it [keep in mind my site is read by people in over 100 countries around the world.] I also learned that in the heavily Asian populated state of Hawaii that they have banned the preparation, selling and serving of shark fin soup. Apparently Hawaii doesn’t have as much problem with an ancient Chinese cultural tradition as other people do.

I’ve noticed that no one has really been talking about the taste until my friend Danielle sent me a comment:

I’ve had shark fin soup. It’s pretty gross. And the thought of where it comes from and how it’s obtained makes it even less appealing. From what I recall… the broth was fishy, but not overwhelmingly so. The fin parts have no taste on their own, and we had the shredded kind (they come in shredded and whole form), so the texture kinda reminded me of very short, very very thin (like rice vermicelli, maybe), yet overcooked, noodles.

Just so you all know, Danielle is not Chinese, but Filipino, a culture that has a very strong connection to eating fish [I won’t hold durian against her though. Hell, I wouldn’t hold a durian against anyone, but fruit doesn’t feel pain when you cut into it at least.]

The UK based group Shark Trust had an interesting article with lots of information on the shark fin trade as well a letter from Chef Gordon Ramsay who, like him or not was appalled to find out about shark finning. This site also provides lots of information to use if you want to be so bold and approach a Chinese restaurant that serves shark fin soup.

None of this is an attack on the Chinese population, it is an attack on a practice not a people, that is reprehensible and is destroying our ocean’s food chain. China has had many cultural traditions that they have tossed aside as being barbaric. If I remember correctly, the British stopped beheading and draw and quartering criminals a few centuries ago, yet that was a cultural tradition. The Romans [Italians] as a cultural tradition fed slaves to lions to amuse the poor, but that as well is gone. So why not add shark fin soup to the list. The only reason that Chinese feel they are targeted is because they are the only one’s that eat it and total of the finning trade supplies China and Chinese markets around the world [if the country allows them to serve it of course.]

Leland Yee, please follow the links here and read the information. Perhaps you could find some way to progress and show your wealth and abundance, not by eating the fins of barbarically captured fish that is toxic to consume and instead show your wealth by giving back to the people. I believe that is a finer tradition to embrace.