Scuba diver helps get shark fin soup off menu

Scuba diver helps get shark fin soup off menu
By Ed Zieralski (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. January 10, 2009
Some local scuba divers and an executive chef combined this week to eliminate a controversial seafood item from a menu for a Chinese New Year celebration.
Scuba-diving enthusiast Carl Robbins noticed the menu in an advertising flyer from Barona Valley Ranch Resort & Casino.
Among the offerings was shark fin soup, the controversial Asian delicacy that relies on the fins of sharks, some of which are finned and released in a mutilated state back into the sea. The practice is being blamed for a decrease in shark populations around the world.
The Year of the Ox, which commences Jan. 26, was going to be started with some fin of the shark, which traces its beginnings to the Ming Dynasty in the mid-1300s.
Outraged, Robbins sent e-mails to Barona and alerted fellow scuba divers and watermen. Robbins, citing Web sites and documentaries, detailed why it's inhumane to offer such a menu item. It's been estimated that every year tens of millions of sharks die a slow death because of finning. Robbins' e-mail to Dean Thomas, executive chef at Barona, explained his stance.
“Today we live in a world that often places the interests of people far above those of the majority of other creatures that share planet Earth with us,” Robbins wrote.
“The negative impact seen in our world's oceans through the ruthless slaughter of sharks for nothing more than their fins has been well-documented. It is a practice that has been long identified with organized crime not to mention the inhumanity towards the sharks as well as the enormous impact to our oceans and therefore to our world.”
Robbins' plea to chef Thomas extended to the American Indian tribe at Barona.
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