NMCP is proud to partner with Greenpeace, The Ocean Foundation and The Coral Reef Alliance to bring you this Summer's Temporary exhibit on Crimes in Marine Life. The focus will be illegal whaling, shark finning and coral reef destructions that comes from illegal fishing activities. The exhibit will include illegal whaling and fishing and the effects of illegal activities on coral reef.
The removal of shark fins from an animal and then discarding its carcass at sea.
Shark attacks and attack fatalities are rare; in 1995 more people in the USA were killed by vending machines than by sharks, 2 people killed by vending machine tip-overs and zero by sharks attacks. (or: Dogs, bees, and lightening on average each kill more humans yearly than sharks).
Sharks that are finned are most often still alive when their fins are cut off their bodies and are still alive when they are dumped back into the sea to slowly sink to the bottom and be eaten alive or bleed to death.
An estimated 100 million sharks are killed annually for their fins.
Over 95% of the shark is thrown away, wasted in finning.
Shark fin soup is considered an aphrodisiac and a sign of prestige in China; shark fins are flavorless and simply add a gelatinous consistency to the soup in which they are used.
To date only 17 countries in the world have banned shark finning. More than 100 countries are involved in the business of trading shark fins.
Some studies suggest that most shark species will become extinct in the next few decades if shark finning continues at the rate it is going today because shark harvesting rates are much higher than shark reproduction rates.
The disappearance of sharks is likely to have devastating consequences for the marine ecosystem. Predictive modeling has shown that other fish, even those that are the normal prey of sharks, could experience total population crashes sharks were to go extinct.
The rate of shark finning is going up, not down, due to recent increase in demand.
Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been lost or left behind by in the ocean by fishermen. These nets entangle dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, manatees, whales, and other sea creatures.
Animals caught in ghost nets starve, suffocate, and bleed to death if not freed. If an animal's appendage is caught it may cut off circulation to the limb and the animal can die of infection.
Many dolphins, turtles, and sharks mistake balloons, from mass balloon releases, and plastic bags for food and will ingest them without being able to digest them and will slowly starve to death from the obstruction.
People toss an approximate 2.5 million pieces of plastic into the oceans hourly.
Trash in the ocean kills more than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles each year through ingestion and entanglement.
Shark Finning
