Does anyone know what kind of shark is used? Can the fin come from any species of shark, or are there certain species that taste better?
And where’s a good place to try it?
[quote=“bababa”]Does anyone know what kind of shark is used? Can the fin come from any species of shark, or are there certain species that taste better?
And where’s a good place to try it?[/quote]
Not sure how helpful this is, but I’ve found that it varies a great deal depending on how “high-end” the eating-establishment is.
As you know, the shark fin is very expensive, so when I go to an expensive restaurant I am always amazed at how different it is. A lot more fin and a lot less broth – for one thing. I’ve found the flavour and texture to vary a great deal as well.
I’m sure (I hope?) you’ll get better and more information from some of the more knowledgable folks around here. [color=blue](“Gee, thanks Hobbes. ‘Go to a good restaurant and you’ll get better soup’ – here’s your ribbon for being helpful!” [/color]:wanker: ) 
But I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you haven’t had it before, and you try it first at a mediocre restaurant, and don’t like it, be sure to at least give it another shot at a top-tier place before giving up. I recently had some at place on the 3rd floor of Taipei 101 (can’t remember the name – Hwa Young?) that I liked a lot.
Sorry, this is not a helpful reply.
I don’t know where the shark fins in the soup here come from, but I read a report last year about what’s happened around Cocos Island, Costa Rica and won’t touch the stuff anymore.
The demand for fins is so great, poachers go to the waters around Cocos Island in large numbers and drag lines behind them with tonnes of fishing hooks hanging off them. Lots of other animals get caught on the lines, including turtles and rays. When the poachers get hold of the sharks, they cut of the fins and throw them back in the water, where they bleed to death. 
I know sharks aren’t cute and fluffy and most people probably wouldn’t think this was such a great loss, but they are the main predators in their environment. Killing them off in large numbers will screw up the ecosystems they live in.
…and for scuba divers they’re stunningly beautiful.
They’re also HIGHLY endangered because of the eating habits of Taiwanese and Chinese.
Moreover, since sharks are at the top of the food chain, their fins have pretty much the highest concentrations of mercury and other toxic minerals you can get from seafood. Wish somebody in the Chinese media would develop a conscience and tell locals that.
Shark Fin Soup? Just say “No!”. :no-no: :stinkyface: 
:snooty:
as vay said, be very careful about how much shark you consume … it’s so full of mercury that if you eat it more than once every two months, you can get a job as a thermometer 
i’ll see if i can find a link for that, but it’s not groundbreaking news anymore
No to sharks fin soup… :fume:
Go to Palau sometime and see first hand the hundreds of fins drying on the Taiwanese fishing boat decks…A supposed ‘bycatch’. :loco:
The shark is most often definned and tossed back into the water while still alive. Sharks fin soup should be outlawed and it’s propagators shot.
They now collect fins from the scalloped hammerhead schools in the Cocos Island chain and the Galapagos Islands…Darwin must be spinning in his grave. The fishing boats wait just outside these pristine protected areas, knowing full well the huge schools will migrate into open water.
The power and majesty of a shark swimming in open water is something that many more people, especially here need to witness. Add the fact that they clean up the gene pool of every prey species they stumble onto, and the shark’s importance to the food chain becomes self evident.
Eating sharks fin soup is no less heinous than powdered Rhino horn, carving elephant tusks for chops, or tiger penis. The fact that they aren’t on the endangered species lists yet shouldn’t matter.
Did you know at one time Kenting used to be a prime spot for whale sharks? That 50 years ago, sharks of all kinds, including Great whites, populated the local waters?
I’ve been diving here for 15 years…Know how many sharks I’ve seen?
Three
I don’t know what pisses me off more, the fact that so many people here (and bazillions more in China) are stupid enough to think eatting some rare animal’s dick or fin will let them bang their wife with full force (because it couldn’t be their own fault they suck…)
Or how clueless other people are who couldn’t care about its “effect” and just eat it for appearances, its fashionable, or cuz its expensive…
All of whom in so doing continue the rape of the land of top predators and other animals…
[quote=“Freakin’ Amazing”]I don’t know what pisses me off more, the fact that so many people here (and bazillions more in China) are stupid enough to think eatting some rare animal’s dick or fin will let them bang their wife with full force (because it couldn’t be their own fault they suck…)
Or how clueless other people are who couldn’t care about its “effect” and just eat it for appearances, its fashionable, or cuz its expensive…
All of whom in so doing continue the rape of the land of top predators and other animals…[/quote]
Ahhh…No Lu Rong for you white eco-caring concerned sensitive citizen of the planet devil!..
…but you knew they are harvested safely…didn’t you?
Sure you did.
shit…I had better edit this so as to not offend the sensitive.
That was a SEINFELD Show reference, to the ‘Soup Nazi.’
In my experience, a ‘good-quality’ shark fin is one that:
- is sold with a big chunk of fin that is actually in the shape of a fin
- is served with brandy
Poorer quality is one that:
- is sold in really small pieces, and the soup is filled up with lots of vegatbables instead of the actual fish.
- is served with vinegar instead of brandy
e.g. The Hyatt, Aegis Club.
Now I have a taste for shark fins soup! Who wants to go with me next week to slaughter hundreds of sharks!!! Woot!!
Since I’m still not sure if you’re serious or just what, I’ll speak reservedly: I’m as about as far from a Greenpeace member as one can imagine. If I want to eat some bear, I’ll go and kill a black bear and eat the whole damn thing, because they are still plentiful in the wild and my government lets me. I will not go kill a grizzly bear, then only take it’s gull bladder and leave the rest of it to rot in the sun, as that is not legal, in most regions grizzlys are endangered, it is such a waste, and just downright… well, as I said before.
And people who eat/use/rub powder of said animal parts on their nose to become pretty/ etc are just as guilty and despisable as the person who kills the animal in the first place. It is you who creates the market and hence the demand.
never had the good stuff. but for middle brow shark’s fin, get yourself invited to a wedding banquet at some high end restaurant. only shark’s fin i’ve ever had has been at wedding banquets. frankly, i wouldn’t even be able to tell if it was real shark’s fin.
they sell a canned shark’s fin soup here in the chinese grocery stores. since it costs like $3 a can, i’m going to guess it’s not really shark’s fin. but it’s a little stringy and gelatinous so i guess it’s close enough.
Since I’m still not sure if your serious or just what, I’ll speak reservedly: I’m as about as far from a Greenpeace member as one can imagine. If I want to eat some bear, I’ll go and kill a black bear and eat the whole damn thing, because they are still plentiful in the wild and my government lets me. I will not go kill a grizzly bear, then only take it’s gull bladder and leave the rest of it to rot in the sun, as that is not legal, in most regions grizzlys are endangered, it is such a waste, and just downright… well, as I said before.
And people who eat/use/rub powder of said animal parts on their nose to become pretty/ etc are just as guilty and despisable as the person who kills the animal in the first place. It is you who creates the market and hence the demand.[/quote]
To be serious, yes, most all deer antlers are safely harvested and they are a renewable resource - they regrow each year. Its in the owners interest to maintain his animals as they are a cash crop. The best are fom the Red Sitka deer. Also Some Elk have a useful amount of the good stuff in them and they are used. As far as killing a bear to gets its paws or internals - I am most definitely not in favor of that. And no tiger wienie for me either.
And I am also NOT a Greenpeacer or PETA perdon. Although I do belong to the group. People Eating Tasty Animals. Throw another steak on the barbie Q !
i just want to say i am very glad after reading this post that most people responding seem to be in favor of protecting sharks.
sharks have ruled the sea for over 300 million years. they have not changed much over that time period either. they are amazing beasts and should be left to fill their niche in the ocean. our oceans are more fragile than we think. if we screw up our oceans and our tropics, then kiss your human asses goodbye, we will eventually die off too.
if someone figures out how to harvest an animal sustainalbly, then that may be worth looking into… but dragging lines and raping the ocean and killing many other creatures just to get a few fins is utterly ridiculous. have we learned nothing from the dodo or the passenger pigeon or the dusky sided sea sparrow or the great auk?
i know a lot of people eat tuna and its the same thing, only tuna harvesters have been held accountable because they were killing so many dolphins in the process. but we allow people to kill a shark, cut off its fins and throw it back to die? sharks breathe by constantly moving. so they either bleed to death or suffocate because they cant maneuver to swim and pass oxygen over their gills, whichever comes first. think of that the next time you shark fin soup lovers are scarfing down a bowl.
greenpeacer or not, its up to everyone to do their part. only buy troll caught tuna.
boycott shark fin soup, i know i will for the rest of my life.
does that include when your Taiwanese father-in law buys you a posh lunch / dinner which includes sharks fin soup? And, for him to lose alot of face if I say no ( and for me for that matter).
So, is it OK, for me to say NO to my father in-law (on any subject)? it is ok to lecture and educate him on this subject?
If so, then surely this goes against all advice from most long-timers here on this web site? Most of the advice on this web site, when we as foreigners encounter something that we do not like or agree with, is that we are not in a position to change things?
does that include when your Taiwanese father-in law buys you a posh lunch / dinner which includes sharks fin soup? And, for him to lose alot of face if I say no ( and for me for that matter).
So, is it OK, for me to say NO to my father in-law (on any subject)? it is ok to lecture and educate him on this subject?[/quote]
Good question. I have refused to eat shark fin soup before. One of the people who had ordered it was not someone I greatly respected, anyway (previous boss). The difficult thing about it seems to be that when you have a meal in a Chinese restaurant with a lot of people, usually one person, the most senior, ends up ordering and paying. You often don’t know what you’re getting until it arrives. By that time, it’s a little late to refuse, but I have refused on occasions when I was eating with someone who I didn’t really care to give face to.
However, just last night my mother-in-law made some shark fin and abalone soup. She says that she only buys fins from farm raised sharks. Even if she does try to buy such fins, I think it is pretty well impossible for the consumer to be sure at this point. There is absolutely no way to verify that they are actually “farm raised.” I seriously doubt that any are. Anyway, I didn’t feel like I could really refuse.
Good point, but refusing to eat it yourself is not the same as forcing others to not eat it. Unfortunately, we aren’t really going to change anybody’s minds about eating shark fins by not eating them ourselves. We aren’t changing anything; we’re just refusing to participate. I’m sure that both you and I do that every day when we’re living in another culture.
dear trapper,
only you can decide what is right for you. you can decide not to order shark fin soup for yourself if this is what you choose. it is a personal matter whether or not you want to purchase, and therefore encourage future shark harvests. or you can refuse to order it.
its like when people used to buy those stuffed alligators in florida as a souvenir. some people bought them because they figured, well its already dead, i didnt kill it, i just bought it. well, now the person that sold it to you has to get more to keep them on the shelf. if nobody bought them the harvester would have no incentive to kill more.
do what you want, but think about what you do. thats all im saying.
i personally am boycotting shrimp, tuna, and shark.
if your face is more important than an animals arms, then enjoy your soup, and tell your father in law it was the best soup you ever had.
[quote=“JOHN MOSS”]dear trapper,
only you can decide what is right for you. you can decide not to order shark fin soup for yourself if this is what you choose. it is a personal matter whether or not you want to purchase, and therefore encourage future shark harvests. or you can refuse to order it.
its like when people used to buy those stuffed alligators in florida as a souvenir. some people bought them because they figured, well its already dead, I didn’t kill it, I just bought it. well, now the person that sold it to you has to get more to keep them on the shelf. if nobody bought them the harvester would have no incentive to kill more.
do what you want, but think about what you do. thats all I’m saying.
I personally am boycotting shrimp, tuna, and shark.
if your face is more important than an animals arms, then enjoy your soup, and tell your father in law it was the best soup you ever had.[/quote]
Which is all nice and stuff, but doesn’t solve the problem of the fact it’s more often ordered for you by a superior of some sort rather than ordered by you.
You guys must be mistaken. They have black bear farms now. Where the black bear lives in a comfy cage with a surgical tube sticking out of the stomach. Then every few days the farmers comes and collects the bile from the gall blabber. Just like collecting maple sap.
If we could only teach the Chinese to start acquiring a taste for whale fin soup, then we could save all those poor man-eating sharks.
Or if we have unresticted genetic research, we could teach sharks to grow back those fins we harvest on a regular basis.
It is me or does shark fin soup taste a lot like turkey soup.