Air date: March 25, 2012

Host: Eric Metcalf

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An alarming study came across my computer earlier today: Shark fins, which some consider a delicacy, can be contaminated with a toxin made from seafaring bacteria. This toxin has been linked to several brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

I was horrified by this. People eating shark fins?! This is nearly as shocking as the news last year that people could get leprosy from eating tainted armadillo.

To get the sharks’ side of the story, I called Kaitlyn Gaffney of the Ocean Conservancy. As it turns out, sharks should be giving each other high-fives over this study. At least the ones who still can.

"The main demand for shark fin is in Asia. Hong Kong is the biggest market. Sharks are caught, fins are removed, hacked off, the rest of the carcass is typically thrown back. The shark fins have a much greater value in the marketplace than the rest of the shark meat, so to avoid taking too much space on the fishing vessel, they just land the fins."

This is pretty wasteful, of course, and it’s not good for shark populations. Adding insult to injury, sharks aren’t even losing their fins because they taste so good.

"I've never tasted shark fins, but what I’ve heard over and over again is they’re tasteless. Instead, it’s a texture, a rubbery, chewy texture that is seen as appealing."

In the new study, researchers checked the fins of seven types of sharks off the coast of South Florida. Some of these types aren’t doing well enough these days to be losing part of their population to the soup pot, Gaffney says.

"I hope that this new research does dampen the appetite for shark fins. Sharks can’t survive their current popularity as a food source, and anything that would decrease interest in eating shark fins would be good for sharks and hopefully good for people."

Fortunately for the sharks, recent years have seen a growing trend in regulations against shark finning and trading in these fins. And if you’re hankering for that rubbery texture without the bad karma - and the neurotoxins - you’re in luck too. Certain noodles and mushrooms can do a decent shark-fin imitation, at a much cheaper cost.

I’m Eric Metcalf, and I say any mushroom doing a shark imitation deserves to be eaten.

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Additional Resources:

• Get details on shark fin neurotoxins from Livescience.com.