Every once in a while, I’m forced to commend a celebrity I usually hate for doing something awesome, because as I told you, we are nothing if not fair here; it’s all about giving credit where credit is due, even if said credit is for the fact that they’re a moron. Anyway, in an op-ed piece for The Huffington Post, Mad Men actress January Jones speaks out against shark-finning (for Oceana), a practice where sharks are caught and their fins are cut off because apparently killing an endangered species so you can use one tiny part of them in a soup is a-okay to some people. And by “some people”, I mean assholes.
Last week, the California Senate passed a bill that made a big statement: Sharks should be swimming in the wild, not in shark fin soup.
The bill bans the trade of shark fins in the state, and if signed into law by the Governor, will mean a complete West Coast ban on the trade of shark fins — a monumental victory for sharks in the Pacific. Oceana, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Humane Society of the United States and WildAid all played a big part in supporting this legislation.
Each year, tens of millions of sharks are killed for their fins, mostly to make shark fin soup. Shark finning is a horrific practice in which a shark’s fins are sliced off at sea and the shark is thrown back in the water to bleed to death. Thankfully, shark finning is illegal in U.S. waters, but that doesn’t stop the shark fin trade.
Shark populations around the world are crashing, which has cascading consequences on the marine food web. Sharks keep marine ecosystems in balance; we need sharks to maintain healthy oceans. This bill protects the at-risk shark species that are being targeted in unsustainable and unregulated fisheries worldwide.
Okay, so granted she’s not exactly an expert, but the fact that she’s willing to speak out on an issue that most people are barely aware of is still pretty cool of her. And sure, you can say that sharks are toothy nightmares designed only to kill, but then again, so is Charlie Sheen, and we gave him millions of dollars to shoot whores. And I mean really, if someone knowingly goes out into shark-infested water dressed like shark food, did they really deserve to live? Of course not. That’s just nature’s way of weeding out the dumb-dumbs.
