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A ‘Double Joy Luck’ package for Weddings & Auspicious Occasions

We appeal to hosts and guests at events where shark’s fin soup is expected to be served; be it at private functions, corporate and public events or weddings, family dinners or carnivals - to refrain from offering or consuming shark fins, the ‘soup of lies’.

If you are getting married soon, your enlightened choice to not serve shark fins at your wedding dinner, will save the life of 30 to 40 sharks while, saving money for other more sensible and enjoyable luxuries. In the spiritual realm, your good deed is good karma for both wealth and good health.

To help with a polite explanation to your guests, OceanNENvironment is producing a ‘Double Joy Luck’ card and letter package for each of your guests. The new symbol of ‘Double Happiness’ is specially designed by one of the world’s top advertising agency, Y&R Singapore. You and your loved ones will be part of a growing fraternity of concerned stewards protecting our planet.  Spread, the No Shark Fins message to family, friends and corporations who will be hosting dinners and encourage them to contact us for the ‘Double Joy Luck’ card and letter package. 

Remember, when the eating stops, so will the indiscriminate killing of sharks. There are far healthier and tastier alternatives. We need not be captives of ruthless and inconsiderate traders whose only goal is to empty our wallets. Write to us at one@oneocean.com for the GOOD LUCK’ card and letter package and join the growing fold of concerned global citizens.

The Fake Dish…’the Soup of Lies’

The cruel culling of sharks for shark fins soup is fast depleting the shark population in the wild. The demand continues unabated and is most rampant among Chinese in China and South East Asia.  Shark fins soup served at auspicious or important dinner occasions is seen a status symbol, a sign of wealth in Chinese communities. They believe it has mystical powers and superlative gastronomical and aphrodisiac qualities.  In truth there is no evidence of its gastronomical, mystical or health benefits. On the contrary, it is not even food and its high concentration of mercury is scientifically proven to cause ill health.

Yet those in the shark fins trade, over decades, have successfully embedded the untruths as powerful beliefs in the Chinese mind, that even the poor at times, scrape the barrel to feast with this soup of lies and fallacies. Besides the evangelical power of religions, the shark fins story is one of the greatest fallacies so successfully sold to a modern world at the detriment of our ecology and humanity.

This state of affairs is not a genetic flaw of Asians; but rather the lack of awareness. Asians have been known for their filial traditions and their sacred respect for animals and nature. In fact the desire for shark fins is unnatural to the Asian psyche. History accords the origins of this dish in the courts of Chinese aristocrats nearly 2000 years ago. Many things originated since then have vanished, like concubines and transistor radios,  But the clever business model of the shark’s fin trader is not some mega A&P programme or campaign, but the quite embedding of outdated and ignorant beliefs. So long as the ‘beliefs’ remain deep in the unconscious, so will the demand for shark’s fin.

One effective weapon to break this hypnotic hold of the uninformed mind perhaps is a jarring awareness of this foolish, barbaric, senseless and tasteless practice that demands a king’s ransom. At the ‘Sharkwater’ movie premiere in Singapore recently, my daughters and their boyfriends, were not only on-the-spot converts, they walked the talk and persuaded others. They weren’t the exception; their experience was the norm that evening. Awareness works. People are sensible; the natural human being is not a cruel being.

Then there are the superstitious – a behavior that moots from fear, that shark fins traders gruesomely exploit. That’s a tough cookie to crack, but persistence and the prospect of receiving good karma through the good deed of saving a magnificent creature from extinction may well be an erstwhile thought for those in need of such spiritual reassurance.

Just as the shark fin trader had successfully embedded these untrue beliefs to ensure a thriving and growing business, we too can use their success model to beat them at their game. By going public in our awareness campaigns and even being loud sometimes, we force the traders’ hand to reduce the supply to keep the prices high. Our campaigns must appeal to the compassionate nature in the same human being who ignorantly believes the lies about shark fins. And one of the best places to begin is where shark’s fin is expected to be served.