Guest Comments by Isabel Escoda

Escoda, a journalist and author living in Hong Kong, comes originally from the Philippines.

HONG KONG -- The dinner honoring Shaw Prize winners at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre last month was the usual glittering affair attended by Chief Executive Donald Tsang and the esteemed 102-year-old Sir Run Run Shaw. It’s disgraceful that the local and foreign media give this yearly event hardly any publicity compared to the Nobel Prizes awarded in Europe.

Six years ago, Shaw did a fine thing by setting up this Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prizes to honor foreign and Chinese scientists. However, serving shark-fin soup at the dinner is surely the height of indifference and environmental incorrectness.

Each year, millions of sharks are dragged aboard boats to have their fins cut off. Then they’re thrown back in the sea, alive or dead. For a long time, it’s been known that most of the fins end up in Hong Kong and on the Chinese mainland for the soup traditionally considered a delicacy and symbol of wealth.

Fisheries experts at the Florida Program for Shark Research and at London’s Imperial College of Conservation Science, among others, have tracked shark fishing in efforts to preserve this endangered species.  How ironic that a Hong Kong philanthropist and his committee can display such indifference to this assault on nature!

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