Terrible Trivia

 

 

Sharks are amongst the largest, most primitive and the most successful of marine creatures. They have stalked the depths of prehistoric oceans with the plesiosaurs, and their design blueprint has remained almost unchanged through the ages. However, due to extensive hunting for liver oil, trophies and for the terrible trade in their fins, most shark populations have been decimated to within a fraction of their previous numbers. India, alongwith the Phillipines and Indonesia is amongst the biggest exporters of shark fins. The fin itself, is bland and without flavour and is merely used as a soup thickener in Far-eastern recipes, but the mystique of the great fish and the fact that it never gets cancer (leading to the mistaken belief that anyone who consumes it wouldn’t either) perhaps added to it’s allure. The dreaded dorsal fin – an appendage that has captured popular imagination as one of nature’s most dreaded calling cards has become the shark’s greatest liability. Sharks, like the oceanic white-tip, a favourite with fin-hunters for its tall fins, are usually caught, hauled onto the boat alive where it’s fin is severed and the creature, bleeding profusely is tossed back into the sea to meet a slow cruel end.

The largest of them all, the whale shark, the largest fish in the world, can grow up to 40-feet in length and weigh almost 10 tonnes. Off the coast of Saurashtra, fishermen, who not too long ago, used to hack this legally protected gentle giant to pieces the moment it was caught, cut open their nets these days if they catch a whale shark, thus foregoing the chance to make almost a lakh of rupees from just one catch just because a local religious leader asked them to. India is a strange country and here’s hoping that other religious leaders join the fray and fill in where governments and conservationists have failed.