ON THE WALLABY- 24th June 2007

“ Sharks: [reciting] I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food.”- Bruce- “Finding Nemo”

SHARKS- CAN THEY WITHSTAND THE ASIAN ECONOMIC BOOM?

The popular myth about sharks is that they will eat you whenever and wherever they can and consequently, the quote that I have used from the wonderful movie Finding Nemo may help change that!!

Nah, only kidding.

Of course, some species of shark are dangerous but given the number of people who enter their domain each year via swimming,sailing and other water based activities, fatalities are miniscule.

Lamentably the reverse of the coin is not so pleasant when you realise that over 18 million sharks are slaughtered each year with their 1.5 million tons yielding in the main such Asian delights as shark fin.

Of this, 90% goes to Hong Kong and another 5% to Singapore, a truly frightening set of statistics.

My question then is simply- “where does all this slaughter both finish and take us?” If we strip our oceans,where does that leave our children and grand children?

As with the ocean stripping long line fishing, one of the real curses of the sea where fishing lines with stainless steel hooks can run for over 70 miles, the day must be approaching where we have taken available food stocks from the last food frontier, the oceans of the world.

Just as with the eventually lowering oil supplies, it once again illustrates to me just how dumb we, as human beings, really are.

As my late father often observed, “the difference between horses and people is that the horses are invariably smarter”!

Watching SBS TV tonight and their excellent program on the environment (and which sparked this OTW with their coverage of Senegalese shark fisherman), it occurs to me that as much as the thought may be repugnant to many in the business world of the West, the way in which we can save the planets food stocks is by encouraging these and other people into crops that we, in the affluent West, can buy.

I always work on the premise that if you are dependant on someone for something, you probably won’t thump or hurt them so if we can help developing nations by buying their produce, then maybe we are also taking a big step forward to securing world peace.

Carpe diem

Tony

Tony Fountain

Professional Speaker, auctioneer and author

tony@fountainandco.com

Sydney NSW Australia

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