Everyone loves Shark Week. We watch them from our own living rooms and marvel at their majestic forms and their fantastic hunting skills, all the while being begged to donate to various organizations to help protect these marvelous creatures. But how could these predators be endangered when they’re at the top of the food chain? Shark finning is largely to blame for that.

What is shark finning? Shark finning is the practice of catching sharks, cutting off their fins and disposing of the rest of the shark. Most of the time, these poor animals are tossed back into the ocean, live and without their fins to swim. Over 100 million sharks, regardless of age or species, are killed each year at the hands of this monstrous practice.

Selling at $300-$500 per pound, the shark fins are often used in the popular dish shark fin soup. It’s a delicacy in China, where most of the world’s shark finning occurs. Although many countries have outlawed this practice, the seas are unregulated and very susceptible to shark finning. What’s worse is that the sharks can’t even combat the mass killing of their kind, since they can’t reproduce nearly as fast as they are being fished.

The shark population in the oceans is one that is very crucial. They help to regulate the populations sea creatures who also regulate other populations of sea creatures. It’s all part of an intertwining web, one where sharks are necessary. Sharks predate most of the creatures in the oceans, and the environment would likely suffer drastically without them.

This practice is extremely inhumane, and threatens to wipe out the shark populations entirely. The generations that follow ours won’t be able to witness these marvelous creatures if shark finning continues. These animals need to be protected, not hunted and murdered for one small portion of their bodies. The next time you order a cup of shark fin soup, think about the precious lives of sharks that were taken for that bowl.