The War Against the Natural World

#2 Ocean of Tears

“Sharks are beautiful animals and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.”

– Dr Sylvia Earle

Humankind has been waging this was for centuries now, on both land and sea, but mostly at sea. A war in which no atrocity is seemingly beyond the pale, including the use of atomic weapons (eight nuclear detonations have taken place inside the ocean, with many more exploding above its surface).  

A holocaust has been taking place in the world’s oceans that now threatens our collective future. This conflict has been characterised by a savage lack of compassion towards the inhabitants of the marine biosphere in every ocean on the planet. There are any number of examples, but one stands out in particular. Shark finning – the widespread practice of cutting the fins off a live shark before throwing its body back into the water – is inexcusable on every level and undermines humanity’s status as a civilised race. Millions of sharks are killed this way each year to satisfy a culinary demand originating largely in China, and in other Asian markets. The agonies suffered by the sharks in question as they slowly bleed out, or suffocate, or are eaten alive by other sea creatures, are difficult to imagine; but on the other hand, maybe they aren’t.

For anyone who has any sense of fellow feeling towards the creatures we share this world with the horror is all too apparent. It’s made worse, if such a thing is possible, when you see that those who are committing this atrocity are laughing while they amputate the fins, often inflicting other wounds on the animal as well, seemingly just for fun. For kicks.

There are no protests or interventions from governments who are reluctant to offend a major trading partner. And then of course there’s the bogus excuse of tradition or heritage or cultural rights, a threadbare screen designed to hide any amount of cruelty and barbarism.

No matter how you look at it we all have blood on our hands. The same blood which is surely on the manicured fingers of the gourmet in the fancy restaurant, or the punter in the street-market chop-shop, as they lift a spoonful of shark fin soup to their lips, oblivious of the salty blood that’s dripping down into their meal.  

I would weep but the well of my tears has run dry, as dry as a stone-spring long-lost to the desert. Look if you dare at the sight which shames us all. Some might say, “It’s just a fish. And a shark at that.” But life is life, and no life should end that way – fin dissevered, an almost genital cut – intimate and mutilating – the trophy tossed through the air onto a mountainous heap. Then, for good measure, the white belly sliced open in a Caesarean wound, the living body thrown back into a sea already claggy with chum, like the offal that sticks to a cannibal’s gums.

To those that wield the eviscerating blade, it’s all just a bit of a lark, like a game of golf down at the park, the mutilators laughing at a good day’s sport, at the latest catch destined for the soup bowl at the finest of restaurants.  How long does it take to die from such wounds in a slow drift to the loamy floor of the sea, down through a womb plundered and torn. In the all but empty vastness how long will it be before the oceans run dry, not of water but of life? I can cry no more in this desert of shame. If only others would weep in this ocean of tears.