Okay, so, we need to talk about shark finning. First, a few things we should get out of the way:

1. I am not indifferent to the welfare of sharks;
2. Shark finning issues are complicated and this will take a minute;
3. I am not defending the practice of shark finning. 1/16
Shark finning is the process of cutting off the fins of a shark and dumping the body at sea. The shark fin trade is the sale of shark fins, from any source. Not all shark fins come from shark finning. 2/16
In the US, by law, sharks must be landed with their fins "naturally attached". Thus US sharks are by definition not finned (except illegally) although their fins may end up being sold into the fin trade. 3/16
Finning is a serious threat to sharks, although far from the only one. But conversations about finning in the US often focus on banning US trade in fins, although US-produced fins mainly come from legal and fairly well-managed fisheries. 4/16
A lot of the illegal or quasi-legal international shark fin trade is driven by poor fishermen in low-income countries. Framing people who fin sharks as evil monsters is a problem. In a lot of cases, they're people who don't have a lot of money or options. 5/16
They're often at sea in boats you wouldn’t set foot on, trying to feed their families and pay their bills. You can have a problem with shark finning without thinking it's the "fault" of vulnerable people. 6/16
Largely, demand for shark fin as a food product comes from Asia. But the way we talk about this is problematic and racist. I can't tell you have many people have told me the "problem" for sharks is the Chinese. 7/16
If you think the problem is global demand for shark fins and the high price they command, the problem you’re really pointing at isn’t “China,” it’s a globalized capitalist system. 8/16
From 2000-2011, the US had the 7th largest catch of sharks globally, and exported a considerable volume of shark products (13th globally according to the FAO). That can’t be China’s fault. 9/16
Shark finning is an attractive issue to us in part because it’s done by someone else, somewhere else. We’re great a critiquing environmentally unfriendly practices we aren’t engaged in. We’re very comfortable telling other people what they should or shouldn’t do. 10/16
Basically everyone who lives in the US is engaged in TONS of environmentally unfriendly practices, many of which affect sharks. Pesticides, fertilizers, C02 pollution, garbage production, overfishing, habitat loss, coastal degradation, and on and on. 11/16
Conservation COSTS something. It usually means making sacrifices now to make the future better. The way we talk about finning expects that all those sacrifices can and should come from other people—mainly from other people who have less money and power than we do. 12/16
The discourse about shark finning talks about people who are different as the sole source of a problem, and it explicitly treats them as “barbaric”. I’ve literally seen finning outreach materials that include racist cartoons released in the last twelve months. 13/16
Until we can start talking about this problem in ways that don’t do that, we’re not talking about finding solutions or protecting sharks. We’re talking about finding tools that let us sometimes violently enforce our preferences and values on people who may not share them. 14/16
There aren’t any easy answers in conservation. If you think you have one, you’re probably missing part of the picture. I don’t think we get to a better world for sharks (or the planet) along a path full of dog-whistling and explicit racism. 15/16
We *could* talk about shark finning (and other conservation problems) in a more honest, thoughtful, and decent way. So can we, please? 16/16
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