The dish is "contested" by the elite but contains horrific brutality

If I have to name 1 of the most famous "sea oyster paint" dishes, it is indispensable for fish fin. The fish fin here is roughly understood as the fins of sharks. They are considered a rare item that often appears on many luxurious, upper-class dining tables.

Shark fin is one of the most expensive products in the world, consumed mainly in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Since ancient times, Chinese people have considered shark fin soup as a symbol of wealth and hospitality, so it is often used on special occasions such as weddings or receptions.

Shark fin soup is perhaps one of China's oldest dishes, created by a Song Emperor in the X century to flaunt power and wealth to courtiers at banquets.

Accordingly, it is not only expensive because it is a rare material, but according to ancient conception, shark fins are also a symbol of status and victory when humans successfully "defeat" giant sharks.

Although shark fin soup is described as not having a particularly good taste and it has not been verified that eating this dish will multiply health, but instead of disappearing, this dish is more and more popular in the modern era and has become a tool for economically well-off families to assert class and geography his taste.

In the 1970s, there was even a saying in Hong Kong: "Stir-fry shark fin with rice" was used to describe the lifestyle of wealthy people, implying that they were rich enough to buy shark fins daily.

To this day, many rich people belong to the older generation in China and many other countries such as Singapore and Malaysia,... It is also still considered that entertaining guests to the house or at the wedding reception is a sign of hospitality.

Since then, this dish has been considered one of the symbols of class and wealth, favored by today's wealthy class. And of course, the symbol of wealth will not be able to carry the normal price. A normal bowl of shark fin soup sells for about $65 to $120 (about 2 to 3 million VND).

However, few people know that behind that nutritious, luxurious dish is the destruction of humanity with sharks. Millions of sharks of all sizes have their fins removed.

The grabbing of sharks' fins is carried out as follows: First, they are caught and dragged onto large boats. There, sharp iron tools were available to cut their fins out of their bodies. After completing that terrifying task, they released the sharks back into the sea, leaving them to die.

Some were still alive but couldn't swim, so they eventually became weak and died. After each shark fin hunt, people fill the finished product in containers and transport it to the mainland. Their fins are stored in warehouses or dried on the rooftops of high-rise buildings.

The fish fin is then either fed directly into restaurants to make the "most expensive soup on the planet", or sold into dried fish fin jars for households. This dish has also spread to many countries in Europe and America.

Gary Stokes, a reporter for the Marine Mammal Conservation Society, said he had lived in Hong Kong for nearly 20 years, and in all his time there, he had never seen shark fins for public sale like in the country. The people here have even been passed down the shark fin business from generation to generation by their parents.

The most accurate assessment of commercial shark fishing was given in a 2013 report published in the scientific journal Marine Policy. Research shows that up to 100 million sharks are killed annually. However, these are only relative statistics. Scientists believe that the actual number of sharks caught is much larger than we can imagine.

Besides the cruel hunting process, the impact of shark fin grabbing goes far beyond other extreme pain. According to statistics, sharks are vulnerable to extinction not only because it is increasingly hunted, but also because the species has a low reproduction rate. According to a 2021 study, since 1970, shark and ray populations globally have declined by as much as 71% due to increased fishing activity.

Because sharks are apex predators, they play an important role in the ocean ecosystem, so if shark numbers plummet, the ecosystem will also be affected.

For example, the declining number of hammerhead sharks leads to an increase in rays, the preferred prey of hammerhead sharks. As the number of rays in the ocean increases, it will eat scallops, mussels and many other prey. This creates an imbalanced ecological cycle, threatening the overall existence of biodiversity.

Not only affecting the aquatic ecosystem, shark hunting for fins also creates a "butterfly effect" that affects land.

"In addition to shark fishing, which is banned, this illegal practice has also caused the deaths of several seabirds, including some endangered species," one researcher said.