shark finning - hacking off the shark’s fins and throwing it back into the sea alive where it starves, drowns or bleeds to death. The demand for shark fins, an Asian delicacy, has already pushed many species of sharks to the edge of extinction. The rest die primarily as by-catch. Joe Chernov came up with a graphic that drives home the staggering number of shark deaths per hour compared to the annual total of humans by sharks. Seriously, take the time to click on this link to look at this awesome chart.

Then there's this amazing woman, who regularly removes fishing hooks from the mouths of wild sharks by sticking her hand down their throats. The sharks actually seem to understand she's trying to help, maybe thinking of her as a funny sort of cleaner fish, who knows? But if the human being and the fish are going to coexist peacefully, we will need a lot more people like her and a lot less shark fin soup on the menu.