Thu, 13/08/2009 - 5:36pm

The comments section of yesterday's post on the shark fin protest by Ran Elfassy of Shark Rescue is on fire and well worth checking out.

Yesterday, a visitor to the blog by the name of John Gulliver left a post about talking about the oft percieved exclusivity of Shark Fin Soup due to its high price.

PHOTO CREDIT: PAUL HILTON PHOTOGRAPHY

Well here's the shocker. Contrary to popular misconception, shark fin is not expensive anymore, and the reasons for this I have set out in my response to John Gulliver further down this page.

For obvious reasons, a cheaper bowl of shark fin soup is catastrophic for the remaining global shark population. It doesn't take a noble prize economist to work out that as shark fin becomes cheaper, more shark fin will be consumed by more people. This in turn will speed up the vicious cycle hastening their extinction. Is this the beginning of the end?



Before going into the economics of the market price for shark fin, I want to share my research on various shark fin promotions around town that I have seen this year.

Here, in descending order of price, are the various shark fin promotions I found:-

1) A current promotion at the Marco Polo Hotel in Hong Kong, where you get a buffet with all kinds of stuff coated in shark fin for HK$328 (US$42.30) per adult, which is less than half the "upwards of US$100 a bowl" price one often sees quoted around quite a bit. Fancy shark fin jelly anyone?

(Strangely enough, this is the same hotel that recently promised it would no longer sell the highly endangered blue fin tuna. Not sure why the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing at the Marco Polo, but hey.)

2) Going down the scale, here's an unlimited shark fin buffet you could find a few months ago at The Metropark Hotel for HK$238 (US$30.70) per adult. This is less than two thirds the usual clichéd US$100 a bowl price:-

PHOTO CREDIT: PAUL HILTON PHOTOGRAPHY

At the bottom end, check out this review from the main Hong Kong restaurant review website Open Rice for a cheap shark fin promotion combo meal including shark fin soup for HK$59 (US$7.61) which you could find in May this year at MX, part of of Maxim's Group. That's less than 8% of the price of that urban myth US$100 a bowl of shark fin soup! Now will people believe me?

The above review translated into English: The latest dinner menu item on offer is a 'shark fin in chicken broth' combo for HK$59, which includes a bowl of rice, a side dish and a cup of tea. The main dish is shark fin soup with half a chicken and real shark fin. What you get really does look like what you see on the promotional leaflet. The soup itself is the main attraction, as it's made of air-dried ham according to the promotional leaflet, but it tastes far worse than what you would get in a proper (ie non fast food) restaurant. The pork tasted bland, but the chicken meat was tender. A good thing was that there wasn't too much MSG. To sum up, a fast food restaurant should always serve cheap food, but serving high-end food such as shark fin with a cheap price tag is actually quite off-putting.

And finally, here's that same cheap shark fin promo at MX, this time in a gushing advertorial in the local Hong Kong daily Wen Wei Po.

A brief translation of the part of the advertorial that refers to the price is as follows:- Cheap price for a superb shark fin soup made with the best ingredients including chicken, air-dried ham. Simmered for hours etc etc...

Now that I have debunked that common myth of the high price of shark fin soup, here's my (slightly re-edited) response to John Gulliver:-