Shark attack: Let’s blame the Chinese!

Surf Website Calls for Genocide!

The recent spate of shark attacks, from Reunion to Australia to Southern California have left surfers around the world scared and angry. Who’s next? You? Me? What’s worse is there is no unified approach on to how to solve the problem, not even amongst surfers. Who could forget when Kelly Slater called for a cull and POW right in his kisser!

There is no unified problem solution because no agreed upon culprit. Are too many people in the water? Sharks over-breeding? Evolving a taste for human flesh?

What about the Chinese?

Sunday’s The Failing New York Times ran the story China’s Appetite Pushes Fish Stocks to Brink on the cover. Let’s read a snippet!

Having depleted the seas close to home, Chinese fishermen are sailing farther to exploit the waters of other countries, their journeys often subsidized by a government more concerned with domestic unemployment and food security than the health of the world’s oceans and the countries that depend on them.

Increasingly, China’s growing armada of distant-water fishing vessels is heading to the waters of West Africa, drawn by corruption and weak enforcement by local governments. West Africa, experts say, now provides the vast majority of the fish caught by China’s distant-water fleet. And by some estimates, as many as two-thirds of those boats engage in fishing that contravenes international or national laws.

China’s distant-water fishing fleet has grown to nearly 2,600 vessels (the United States has fewer than one-tenth as many), with 400 boats coming into service between 2014 and 2016 alone. Most of the Chinese ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as Senegalese boats catch in a year, costing West African economies $2 billion a year, according to a new study published by the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

“Chinese fleets are all over the world now, and without these subsidies, the industry just wouldn’t be sustainable,” said Li Shuo, a global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia. “For Senegal and other countries of West Africa, the impact has been devastating.”

When it comes to global fishing operations, China is the indisputable king of the sea. It is the world’s biggest seafood exporter, and its population accounts for more than a third of all fish consumption worldwide, a figure growing by 6 percent a year.

Etc. Etc.

Read the rest here and you’ll likely be inclined toward depression but this is BeachGrit! It’s anti-depressive so let’s cheer the fact that we have a culprit to blame for our shark attack problem and maybe a solution.

What if we cull the Chinese?

Just kidding!

But do you think, by asking, BeachGrit can get smashed in a tabloid just like Surf Europe did?

I can see the headline now! Surf Website Calls for Genocide.

It’ll be my proudest day ever.