New York's Golden Unicorn Restaurant Serves Endangered Shark

Shark fin soup is served as a delicacy in Chinese restaurants across the U.S. The dish is seen as a status symbol, and it's traditionally served at major events like weddings and banquets.

A growing number of restaurants are discontinuing the dish, though, as diners, environmentalists, and activists become increasingly aware of the  gory, inhumane process of harvesting shark fins.  Even basketball star Yao Ming has spoken out against the dish, and California lawmakers are considering outlawing the sale of shark fin throughout the state.

New York City eatery Golden Unicorn, however, is not on this growing list of shark supporters. The restaurant continues to dish out shark fin soup despite the fact that some populations of sharks have decreased by as much as 90 percent in recent years, largely due to finning.

Shark finning is lucrative for fishermen — fins can bring in hundreds of dollars a pound. But the money is certainly not worth the massive destruction that finning causes.

Shark finning is a brutal procedure. Sharks are hauled onto boats, their fins are sliced off, and then they're thrown back overboard where they drown, bleed, or starve to death. This issue runs deeper than how inhumane the finning process is, though. We need sharks around to have healthy oceans. Sharks are high-level predators that reach reproductive age slowly and produce few offspring, making them very susceptible to overfishing. We need sharks to keep other predator populations under control. As activist and Greenpeace seafood campaigner Casson Trenor recently wrote, an ocean without sharks just won't work.

People are starting to step up to protect sharks. Hawaii and Washington have banned shark fin recently, and legislation is moving through the California Senate now that would ban shark fin. There are even some restaurants pioneering an imitation shark fin made from gelatin.

But waiting for each state to pass this kind of protective legislation is clearly not happening fast enough, especially when opponents of the bans  have the capacity to hire heavy-hitting lobbyists. Demand from restaurateurs keep the practice of shark finning going.  As conscientious consumers, we have a responsibility to speak up and let restaurants know that we want shark fin removed from their menus. You can start by signing our petition to Golden Unicorn asking them to drop shark fin soup.

Photo credit: relgar via Flickr