Fritz Van Der Grift is a guy with probable intimacy problems who resides in Palm Beach, Florida. He kills Sharks and then claims he only wanted to take their picture. British Tabloid The Sun posted a story about him this week in which they claim that he reeled in a 14-foot 1000-pound Great Hammerhead of Palm Beach. It is hard to say if this is true or not because The Sun is a notoriously piss poor fact checker. Why might this story be erroneous? Because last year at this time there was a story about Fritz Van Der Grift catching a Great Hammerhead off similar size in the same area. His excuse for fishing the Shark out of the sea was exactly the same: "I didn't want to kill it. I just wanted to take its picture." The problem with that is that the amount of energy that a Shark of that size expends while trying to escape the hook is so great that the Shark usually dies. The only safe way to take pictures of Sharks is to get into the water with them. The funny thing is, the same people who hunt Sharks because they want to look macho, are the same people that are usually too afraid to get into the water with them. Not so macho.

Is this the picture you wanted to take douche?

Let us hope that The Sun's story is a repeat, because Great Hammerheads are an endangered species, and we would hate to think anyone would be insensitive and retarded enough to kill a second endangered Great Hammerhead after already killing one and offering the same excuse both times. That would truly be insensitive and retarded.

--Sharky

Note to self: this story deserves better than this cheap shot.

There is evidence that the years and years of wildlife conservationists hammering away at the appetite for Shark Fin Soup as a status dish in Asia, is actually having an effect. It appears younger Asians are asking to have Shark Fin taken off their wedding menus, a request that would have sounded ludicrous to their parents five or ten years ago. Many Asian students are aware of the impact the soup has taken on Shark populations, and the dish is becoming increasingly unpopular among them. This is a damn good thing, because the Shark Fin trade is nearly single-handedly driving Sharks to extinction and throwing entire ecosystems off balance. Here are some promising figures:

Worldwide shark consumption dropped from a peak of 897,000 metric tonnes in 2003 to 758,000 in 2006, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Indonesia's overall 2006 haul of 98,250 metric tonnes compares to a 2003 peak of 117,559 metric tonnes, while Taiwan's 40,000 to 45,000 metric tonnes of shark caught per year is down from around 70,000 annually in the early 1990s.

[source]

While these figures do seem promising, there may be other factors in play in these numbers besides people being educated about the cruelty and irresponsibility of the Shark Fin trade. It is possible that Shark Fin consumption is waning because the global economy is in the crapper. It is also very possible that the reason less Sharks are being hauled into port is because there are simply less Sharks in the ocean...and I was so happy when I first read the figures...see what happens when you read beyond the information spoon-fed to you in a simple media piece.

Shark Fin Soup is Bad Food,

--Sharky

Who the fuck is Yoine Goldstein? He is a douche-pickle senator from Quebec, who is threatening to refer anyone who sends him e-mail regarding the Canadian Seal hunt to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And who the hell are the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? I think they may be some kind of homoerotic backwater Canadian Cavalry, but no one really knows for sure. Who the hell knows? Anyway, if you want to send him an e-mail telling him that the Canadian Seal Hunt is barbaric and should be stopped immediately here is his address: goldsy@sen.parl.gc.ca. Just make sure that if you send him an e-mail, remember not to put anything about Seals in the subject like, or he won't read it. Give him a nice innocuous subject like, "A letter from a concerned citizen." Or better yet, write it in French.

In order to break up our coverage of the shameful Canadian Seal hunt--frankly, it makes me want to drive up to Newfoundland and pick bar fights--here is something completely completely unrelated. Because there are things other than Sharks to worry about at the beach:

Because, it's not funny!

--Sharky

See if you can tell how these two videos are similar and how they are different.

Funny

Not Funny

Thanks to the evil bastards at ectomo.com for the Lego art.

--Ms Sharky

The 2009 Seal "Hunt" began this week in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence. Even though the Irish Parliament recently banned Seal pelts, Vladmir Putin announced that he is banning the killing of baby Seals in Russia, and the European Union is poised to ban all Seal products as early as April, Canada brazenly upped their 2009 kill quota from last year's 283,000 Harp Seals to 338,000. They also set a quota to kill 55,000 Grey Seals and 8,500 Hood Seals. And they didn't even make their quota last year. There is very little chance that the Sealers will be able to kill over 300,000 Seals this year. With the amount of rotgut Sealers drink there is no way they will be able to keep up with that level of production. There isn't even much of a market for seal pelts anyway. Last year only about $7 million worth of pelts were harvested ripped from the backs of baby Seals--oh, the Canadian Government will say that they are not babies because they are over 2 weeks old. The average age of a "harvested" Seal is 3 weeks old. There are an estimated 7 thousand drunken ice monkeys that take part in the "hunt." That means that each monkey averaged $1000 for their "efforts." The Canadian Government is likely spending 5 to 10 times what the Seal "harvest" is worth to lobby world governments to keep markets for the pelts open and to fight the efforts of Anti-Sealing NGOs.

Season's Greetings from New Foundland.

In other words: it would be cheaper to simply write a check for $1000 once a year for each Seal clubber. Once the European ban goes into effect, and it looks like it will, the market for pelts will be much much less. If we were Sealers, we would settle for the $1000 a year now and be done with it...but then again, we aren't Sealers are we. We are civilized.

--Ms Sharky