Activism With Teeth

Here's something to chew on. People who were attacked by sharks are fighting to increase legal protections for ... sharks.

Activists who have been shark food were lobbying on Capitol Hill yesterday, aiming to motivate Congress to enact legislation to protect these creatures from becoming people food. The bill the activists support, S. 850, strengthens a law that prohibits "finning" in U.S. waters. Finning involves slicing off a shark's fin for use in shark-fin soup and throwing the rest of the of the animal back into the water to die. The soup is a Chinese delicacy, popular with millions of people in part because it is considered ultra-nutritious and an aphrodisiac.

The group of attack survivors is organized by an employee of the Pew Environment Group, Debbie Salamone, who herself was chomped by a shark while walking in waist-deep water. Her run-in really brought home the urgent necessity of promoting a balance between human society and the natural world; she considered the bite a test of her mettle as an environmentalist.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature classifies 32 percent of the sharks and rays dwelling in the open ocean as "threatened." Although most finning occurs outside U.S. waters, these survivors support whatever will help take a bite out of the problem.