If you were a kid in the 1970s, you undoubtedly were at least a little terrified of going into the ocean – a fear placed squarely in your subconscious by the Jaws movies. But, according to the International Shark Attack File, there are only around 72 unprovoked shark attacks around the world per year, a relatively small amount given the many sleepless nights and swimming phobias arising from a fear of sharks. The far scarier reality is that the much-demonized shark has long been under attack itself from its greatest predator: us. Humans kill well over 100 million sharks in any given year. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Mongabay reporter, Philip Jacobson, to learn about the illegal shark-finning practices of one Chinese-based fishing company, why he believes this practice is far from unique, and what efforts are being taken to save this important apex predator.

00:02 Narrator – This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.

00:22 Philip Jacobson (PJ) – You know one of the policies that are put in place to combat shark finning. It’s not necessarily banning the trade, but you tell boats, OK, you can’t just keep the fin and throw the body away you have to keep the whole shark.

00:37 Alex Wise (AW) – If you were a kid in the 1970s, you undoubtedly were at least a little terrified of going into the ocean – a fear placed squarely in your subconscious by the Jaws movies. But, according to the International Shark Attack File, there are only around 72 unprovoked shark attacks around the world per year, a relatively small amount given the many sleepless nights and swimming phobias arising from a fear of sharks. The far scarier reality is that the much-demonized shark has long been under attack itself from its greatest predator: us. Humans kill well over 100 million sharks in any given year. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Mongabay reporter, Philip Jacobson, to learn about the illegal shark-finning practices of one Chinese-based fishing company, why he believes this practice is far from unique, and what efforts are being taken to save this important apex predator.

01:48 Alex Wise (AW) – I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by Philip Jacobson. He is a journalist for Mongabay and he’s based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Phil, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

01:57 Philip Jacobson (PJ) – Hi Alex, thanks for having me on the show, it’s great to be here.

02:00 AW – Well, it’s a pleasure to have you been reading your work? You’ve done a lot of investigative work into the shark finning practice that is running rampant across the Asian seafood marketplace. First, why don’t you explain why sharks are being hunted and why the sharkfin has become this, almost an outlier in how we process seafood. This is not like just catching tuna. It seems very wasteful and a dangerous precedent.

02:33 PJ – Sure, so shark fins are eaten as part of shark fin soup, which is a delicacy in parts of Asia, especially East Asia. It’s been a pretty big industry for the past several decades, especially as China’s middle class kind of exploded grew a lot in 80s nineties, 2000s, and that created a lot of new demand for shark fins. Soup used to be served at weddings. Plot and official functions in China. So there’s been some effort to kind of crack down on it in recent years by the Chinese government. They’ve banned it at official government functions, for example. Just because you know of the trouble that sharks are in from a conservation perspective, many shark populations going extinct because of the demands, especially for their fins. Nowadays, sharks are being hunted more and more for their meat, which is also eaten, but I guess that’s another story – I published recently with Manga Bay focused on a shark finning operation that was taking place across the fleet of a a major tuna fishing company, a Chinese company.

03:51 AW – Yes, and I I wanted to ask you about that because in the in the piece you ...