By Edward Dorson
The U.S. Shark Conservation Act of 2009, a bill that offered a critical lifeline for sharks, has recently been blocked by a dysfunctional U.S. Senate. Sharks are being decimated primarily to supply shark fin soup as an expensive status symbol delicacy to the burgeoning middle class of Asia, mainly in China. If not rapidly passed, the Act will have no purpose once sharks hit their impending point of no return. Resurrecting this legislation is urgently needed for both the preservation of sharks and our nation’s fading conservation ethos.

The threat to sharks from finning and to a planet that requires their continued existence isn’t half-baked ideology — it’s empirical fact. Studies are consistently revealing that sharks, as apex predators, are essential to regulate species abundance and distribution to maintain healthy oceans. Yet the world’s sharks are being slaughtered at an unsustainable rate of 3 per second (estimated at 100 million …