Sharks as a species have survived everything for about 400 million years; ice ages, volcanic eruptions, plate tectonics, meteor strikes, asteroid showers and dinosaur sized ocean alligators and other frightening creatures. After all that they are now being hunted and slaughtered by the tens of millions for only one thing, their fins! Could it be that sharks will possibly disappear so that people can have Shark Fin Soup? The answer is a sad and troubling Yes! Amidst progress, such as 11 states in the U.S. banning the sale of shark fins, we have the European Union failing to place limits on shark finning at their December 2016 meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

The Global High Seas Marine Preserve views developments such as Air China Cargo banning the shark fins from their aircraft as hypocritical, this because thousands of Chinese fishing vessels are out raping oceans worldwide all the time. Shark Fin Soup is a delicacy in China and the Communist state, with major economic, cultural and environmental problems, is not about to reign in illegal fishing any more than they will stop trying to take over the South China Sea militarily. With upwards of 100-million sharks being slaughtered annually, they will soon join tuna on the list of top predator marine species being wiped out.  

"The reason we founded the Global High Seas Marine Preserve is that the situation is dire, industrial fishing and the attitudes of catch everything that moves on the high seas is killing the oceans. Progress has been made, but not enough, the world needs to ban industrial fishing on the high seas and enforce it with military force. Studying and talking are pretty much done, the end game is upon us and dead oceans will be the result of doing nothing," says Danny Quintana, founder of the Global High Seas Marine Preserve and author of Space & Ocean Exploration: The Alternative to the Military-Industrial Complex. For more info go to www.SavingOceans.org. 

GHSMP is currently running a campaign to educate the public on demanding sustainable seafood products from local merchants and encouraging municipal authorities to outlaw the marketing of seafood obtained by industrial fishing. For media interviews contact E.B. GO Vision Media at c@ebgoinc.com.

Shark Fin Soup is a recent trend and it is a rather strange one as explained on a Sea Shephard website:

Shark Fin Soup - for what?

The fins are dried, stacked, and sold, mostly illegally. The buyers extract the collagen fibers, clean them, and process them into "shark fin soup"

This soup has no flavor and absolutely no nutritional value. It is a dish served only for prestige purposes, selling for anywhere from US$50.00 to US$400.00 per bowl.

The demand for shark fin soup has developed since 1985 and coincides with the rapid growth of the Chinese economy. The demand from China is for staggering amounts of shark fins. As a result, the oceans are literally being scoured clean of sharks. Poachers are invading national marine parks like the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador and Cocos Island in Costa Rica to catch sharks.

Forget the fictional fear spawned by Steven Spielberg's ridiculous film Jaws. The oceans are no longer safe for sharks. And the horror is that we don't just kill them, we hack off their limbs and toss their mutilated bodies back into the sea to die an agonizing and horrific death.

Sea Shepherd Singapore has been educating the public for the last several years about the devastating effect that the Asian culture's use of shark fin soup is having on shark populations. Grant Pereira, Sea Shepherd Singapore representative and SSCS Advisory Board member, has overseen the production of a series of striking postcards and is marketing them widely with the objective of stopping this useless, wasteful, and cruel so-called "tradition"

GHSMP Mission Statement:

To Governments and Global Leaders

Whereas since 1970 half of the wildlife in the oceans has been slaughtered, and the world's major fisheries are collapsing, and are either in decline or being over fished and

Whereas over 70 million sharks are being killed annually by Asian nations for shark fin soup, and sharks are an important predator at the top of the food chain and necessary for the health of the fisheries, and

Whereas 90 percent of the predators in the oceans have been killed. These predators include but are not limited to blue fin tuna, sword fish, sail fish, marlin, sharks, and

Whereas the industrial commercial fishing fleets of ten nations who subsidize their fishing industries are responsible for 70 percent of the industrial commercial fishing. These industrial commercial fishing fleets constitute less than one percent of all fisherman and

Whereas over one billion people depend on the fish protein from the oceans for their daily food and certain cultures have been dependent on fishing as their economic livelihood for thousands of years, and

Whereas industrial commercial fishing on the high seas is destroying the oceans' sea life including sensitive coral reefs that take thousands of years to develop, and,

Whereas the High Seas is the area on the planet known as international waters out past 200 miles that are governed by the Law of the Seas Treaty,NOW THEREFORE, We the citizens of the planet hereby Petition our governments and global leaders to amend the Law of the Seas Treaty as follows:

-Create a Global High Seas Marine Preserve under International Law permanently closing off international waters, the area of the planet commonly known as the "high seas", to industrial commercial fishing,

-All shark finning is permanently banned,

-All long lining is permanently banned,

-All drift nets are permanently banned,

-All nations shall work to clean their beaches and rivers from all plastic and other garbage to prevent it from entering the oceans,

-All nations shall assist in enforcing this ban on commercial fishing and work to improve the fisheries,