Environmentalists launched a yearlong campaign this week to persuade Singapore diners to stop eating shark’s fin soup, a popular delicacy in the country. To meet market demand, fishers slice fins off live sharks and then toss the helpless creatures back into the sea to die. As a result, shark populations are being devastated and traders supplying the Asian market are having to go to such faraway places as the Galapagos Islands and South African coast to find the fish, says Michael Aw, organizer of the Save Our Sharks campaign. The conservation group WildAid says that shark fin trade more than doubled between 1980 and 1997. Similar campaigns are planned for Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Australia.
