Letter to Editor

Dear editor, I am writing to express my point of view towards Chinese people's practice of consuming shark's fin soup. Eating shark's fin soup has long been a famous and common practice in Chinese culture. Shark's fin soup is a valuable food, it provides rich nutrients in keeping people's beauty. It is always one of the dishes at important festivals and in wedding meals. Eating shark's fin soup is extravagance behaviour in the Chinese culture as shark's fin is a rare ingredient. People love having shark's fin soup as a dish on special occasions because it can show their heroism and a different status. However, the practice of eating this delicacy has caused the sharks to suffer seriously and the number of sharks decreased. To prevent sharks from disappearing, we must put a stop on eating shark's fin soup. There are two reasons for such motive. First, extinction of sharks will affect the marine ecosystem. As sharks fin is precious and it can be sold at very high prices, fishermen are keen to hunt sharks in order to make huge profits. To do so, the total number of sharks is decreasing, it has dropped by 90 percent in the past 30 years. Sharks are becoming extinct. There will be more small fishes since they lose their largest enemies. Therefore, the whole ecosystem is becoming imbalance. Consuming less shark's fin soup can reduce the number of sharks being killed, this helps to save sharks from losing their numbers. Second, the hunting process of sharks is crucial. To get high-valued shark's fin, fishermen hunt sharks and cut away their fins. Since shark's meat only costs a low price, fishermen tend to put the sharks back into the seas after cutting away their fins to make more spaces for storing fins. The sharks without fins will soon die of suffocation or over bleeding. Such merciless fishing process scares people away from consuming shark's fin soup. With fewer consumers, fishermen have to reduce their fishing amount