Disgusted of River Valley Road writes...

Chinese New Year has finished now, and another swathe of sharks have been killed to provide soup for the Chinese. I did what any Singaporean would do in such a circumstance and burnt down all the sharks fin merchants I could find, then started a public riot. No, actually, I wrote to the newspaper. I don't hold out much hope for publication though as their advertisers might object. So in some ways I am also subject to a censored media. Or maybe my letter is the work of a fish obsessed freak.

One of the things that I do object to here is the censorship of the media. It makes for very dull reading. Headlines such as 'Everything is fine' and 'Greatness is up 14%' are hardly insightful journalism. Thankfully the Internet is almost totally uncensored here, I believe that a few adult sites may be blocked but have yet to put this to the test. I did meet a guy at some drinks whose company provides porn monitoring software (it's the pink pixels %, so stick to the Asian babes sites guys...) but that's as far as it goes. Apparently Singaporeans read a lot of blogs for the 'truth', but you still can't go and see a play yet that is critical of the administration.

We shipped my DVD collection out here. We were warned that DVDs can be subject to censorship and given the themes of my collection (death, drugs, destruction and violence - and that's just Scarface) I was pretty worried. Especially as the customs people charge you to watch the DVDs (much like James making his living), 3 USD an hour, then additionally more to make cuts. Though how you edit a DVD has never been satisfactorily explained to me. The one film in the collection that I wasn't worried about at the time was 'Zoolander', until I read that the film had been banned in Singapore. It appears this was only 'unbanned' last year. Read more at the link. Anyway all films came through unscathed which has to be indicative of Singapore lightening up a little or perhaps the customs guys were feeling expansive. Nethertheless I understand that 'Borat' has been subject to 20 minutes of cutting before getting an over 21's cinema release. I have a copy from Thailand so I'm not sure what state that is in. Even 'Pans Labyrinth' had a noticeable cut where the background music stopped suddenly, I have no idea what was removed.

Anyway, this is my letter:

Catching up on my reading, I read with some sadness the article in Today (February 7th) entitled 'Whale on our plates - how?' where the writer questioned how a restaurant could serve a protected species on their menu. A recent walk through Chinatown to enjoy the preparations for Chinese New Year showed a large increase in the numbers of shops and stalls offering sharks fin and sharks fin soup. It seems at odds that people are prepared to contribute to the extinction of one species through over consumption and yet leap to the defence of another.

Let's look at some of the facts. Currently more than 100 million sharks are taken from the seas each year - a rate at which they simply cannot survive. They cannot survive this onslaught because, unlike many other fish, most large sharks don't reach sexual maturity until seven years old or even later, and then only give birth to a few pups each year. Right now, they are simply being caught and killed faster than they can reproduce. Sharks are wild animals as are most fish we eat and are not farmed in a sustainable way. For a long time we have regarded the ocean as an unending source of food, but this has now been proven to be erroneous with the collapse of commercial fish stocks due to greedy overfishing. It is unknown how long the shark population will survive. Currently there are 18 species of shark on the Endangered Red List. Last year there were 11 species. With fishing techniques becoming more sophisticated and the demand for fins and meat at unprecedented levels, some species are rapidly moving towards extinction. By 2017 it is anticipated that 20 species of shark could become extinct due to hunting, indiscriminate fishing techniques and, ultimately, man's greed. That's only 10 years.

Todays article (February 15th) 'Chinese New Year feasting sends price of fish soaring' only highlights the plight of fish stocks in general. Demand rises due to Chinese New Year, but catches are less and less each year. Supply is diminishing so prices go up. Who cannot honestly say that the size of the fish they are served in restaurants has been steadily decreasing within their memory?

At the end of the day, it is our responsibility to safeguard the environment for our children. Do you want to be personally responsible for contributing to the extinction of a species? One day you may have to tell your children that we used to have sharks, but now there are non left for them to see for themselves. Paradoxically, the extremely high levels of mercury in shark fin can leave a man infertile so perhaps if we continue to eat sharks fin we won't be having children to tell this to anyway.

The Chinese character for shark contains a warning. It includes the two sub-characters 'less' and 'fish'. Time is running out for the sharks and only we can make a difference. Think about what you choose to eat over Chinese New Year and beyond.

Yours faithfully

Matt Tench