Shark Finning Carnage

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Comment by Donald Reid on December 27, 2008 at 8:00am

Jeff, there is no 'cod fishing' in Brazil. All 'cod' is imported. Brazilians, mostly, are desendents of Portuguese and 'cod' was traditionally for religious holidays. At the time we worked on this project, the government was keen on reducing imports. The product was called 'Tubacalao' (Bacalao being the Portuguese word for Cod). I tried researching it but nothing showed up on Google. This project was sort of 'undercover' because of the public non-acceptance of the idea of eating shark. Shark is also, today, marketed under the name Cacão in Brazil for the same reason. In the USA they marketed shark under the name Grayfish for the same reason. The secret was ' bleeding' the shark at the time of capture. Few realize that shark urine is contained in their blood and if the blood is allowed to remain, it saturates the carcess with a foul taste. Sharks urinate via the gills. We would hang the shark like a pig at slaughter ... cut off the tail ... and inserting a small salt water pump in the exposed artery. Under pressure the salt water replaced the blood. The resulting meat was white and delicious, even better that the 'salty cod' that was imported. I hate 'salted cod' ....

Donald

Comment by Jeff on December 24, 2008 at 9:24am

Don - that's an amazing story. Is it documented anywhere? I'd love to share it with my shark-saving friends.

How are the cod fisheries in that area of the world? Unfortunately the northern fisheries have completely collapsed through overfishing.

Jeff

Comment by Donald Reid on December 24, 2008 at 8:28am

Jeff, good morning .... this is an interesting video. In 1982 when I first started working in Brazil for SUDEPE (now IBAMA), my first project was to subsitute 'whale fishing' with 'shark fishing'. The only thing the fishermen at that time took from sharks was the fins, throwing the carcesses away. We taught them how to correctly process the sharks, and created a market substituting 'cod fish'. The Brazilians, mostly of Portuguese desent, savor cod fish especially during religious holidays.

The system stopped 'whaling' and stopped the 'finning' practice. Today the entire shark is used.
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Donald