I spent an evening watching Sharkwater with my mother. I was hoping that the documentary would change her attitude towards shark’s fin consumption, or at the very least allow me to understand the barriers hindering the change in consumers’ mindsets.

I reckon that she would not touch another bowl of shark’s fin soup in the future. However, her decision has little to do with understanding the importance of sharks in the ecosystem. Halfway through the documentary, she turned to me and quizzed,

“But so what if we finish eating the sharks? Can we move on to eat other things?”

It stunned me for a moment. I had to reason that she turns 60 this year and hasn’t had much formal education. As such, it may not occur to her that we shouldn’t be eating animals to the brink of extinction, that the removal of a species could disrupt the entire marine ecosystem, or that Man and nature are not separate entities. I did hit the pause button and took time to explain this to her then.

At the end of the day, however, my mother’s decision to not consume shark’s fin was directly attributable to the toxins (mercury!) in the fins and also her disgust by the cruelty in finning, not so much of the notion that there’s a balance in nature that we need to maintain.

Yes, it was heart-wrenching for both of us.

But beyond that, this endeavor to educate ourselves opened our minds to the issues we chose to ignore. It’s so easy to do the latter in Singapore because most of us live comfortably; we do not need to witness the process that the animal went through to become meat on our tables, we just need to pay for it to happen.

If anything, I pity the fishermen featured in the documentary. We made them killers. It’s tough to fight for morals and animal rights when you’re poor, because all that righteousness can’t bring food to the table. The fins fetch the most profit and laymen facing the same situation would resort to doing the same thing.

Unfortunately, the rich wants to get richer. So they continue exploiting these fishermen to do the dirty deed.

Then again, who gave these people the incentive to profit from killing sharks? It’s a simple case of demand and supply. Demand drives the killing of sharks, shark supply decreases, fins fetch higher prices and fisheries operate to profit from finning. It’s us- we are the drivers of this killing.

Without demand, there will be no reason for supply.

The first step is to cease the demand.

And a coup for shark’s fin soup starts from within.

“The train of human destruction might be steaming along, but if there are enough of us pulling in the opposite direction we can slow it down. The time for living unconsciously is over.”

–Lesley Rochat (founder AOCA)