Redrock Outdoors News And Views

I wanted to take a minute to pass this one along.  Just the other day, I was invited to watch a documentary called Sharkwater.  I didn’t really know what to expect, the person who sent the movie along basically just said “You have GOT to watch this…”  Well, I did, and by the time the movie was over, my blood was boiling and I decided I would make it a point to do everything I could to spread the word.

The movie is a Documentary, basically covering the practice of longline fishing for sharks so that their fins can be removed for the “shark fin soup” that the Japanese culture considers to be an “ultimate delicacy.”  Here’s the basics of the practice, longlines are trailed through the water, miles and miles long, and the sharks that are caught are pulled in, their fins are quickly hacked off, and the shark is then dumped back into the ocean.  I’ll warn you right now, this practice is brutal to watch. 

You can buy the movie off iTunes, or order a DVD or Blu-Ray disk from the main site.  Here’s the link:

http://www.sharkwater.com/

The movie makes a compelling case regarding the dangers or this wholesale slaughter of the apex predator of our oceans, and the scale of this problem is something that we need to be extremely worried about.  The guys taking the shark fins are operating seemingly at will in places such as off the coast of Costa Rica and even around the Gallapagos Islands.  The fins are big business, and are going to Japan by the hundreds of thousands.  Most people seem to think that there isn’t any reason not to kill sharks, after all, they’re scary and have big teeth.  It absolutely amazes me how short-sighted we are about such things.

I truly believe that we need to be stewards of this planet, and that we need to respect the role of every creature in every ecosystem.  I am deeply worried that we’re going to look around in a decade and go “Man, we sure screwed things up by killing sharks by the millions…” 

Please watch this movie, watch it with a friend, with your kids, tell your friends about it.  This isn’t the only serious issue we need to be actively engaged with, but I think it’s a very important one.  We need to build a groundswell of support for the people who are working to end this practice.  We need to build enough public awareness so that even in Japan, people will get the message that this stupid delicacy has got to be taken off the menu.