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I was thinking about Shark Fin soup, and about the much reported practice of throwing the sharks back into the water, to die.
It occured to me, that the throwing of the doomed shark back into the water is actually much more environmentally friendly than it might seem. The shark, tossed back into the water, will undoubtedly die, and provide sustinence for a plethora of other sea life. Much of the deep sea life depends on the sunken corpses of large fish.
It would be much more problematic if the shark were taken and cut into steaks to be consumed by humans. Then the human feces produced would do little to benefit the ocean habitat.
Is the practice brutal, and cruel to the animals? Most likely.
I mean, is drowning a worse death than what fishermen do to most fish? I can't really speak to that. I've never suffocated. I'm not a fish. I don't even know how most fish actually die in commercial fishing - I presume they die from frost, or suffocation from being out of water.
I'm not suggesting that Carol is wrong here, just mentioning that we often need to fully examine practices we consider brutal and/or wasteful.
