Disney Strikes Shark-fin Soup Off Of Its Menu....

But in an attempt to salvage its battered reputation in the face of a global call for a Disney boycott, a spokesman said the decision was because the management was ``not able to identify an environmentally sustainable fishing source'' to ensure the fins sold were not products of large-scale butchering of sharks in open seas.

This is a good thing. They caved in to reason and showed that there is no real other source than the brutal finning and large scale butchering of these creatures in the open oceans.

What exactly is finning?

"Finning" refers to the practice of cutting off only the shark fins and discarding the body. Sometimes sharks are dead when they're pulled into the boats, but often, they're still alive as their four fins are cut off with a knife. When they're thrown back into the ocean the sharks either bleed to death, or they drown, because sharks can't swim without fins, and they need to go forward to get oxygen. Divers have discovered hundreds of dead finned sharks at the bottom of the ocean in huge shark graveyards.

Fifty percent of sharks are bycatch -- they're accidentally caught by boats that are looking for tuna, swordfish or other fish. Many of the boats don't want to keep the entire shark, so they just fin them. This greatly increases the amount of sharks killed, because a fishing boat can hold an enormous amount of fins.