Three facts you probably never knew about sharks:

• The Swell Shark, from NZ, has a bark like a dog.
• More people are killed by bees than sharks.
• Sharks have been around for more than 420 million years - longer than dinosaurs!

Have we got your attention? Good, 'cause we want you to take a stand against shark fin soup. What's wrong with shark fin soup? More to the point, "What isn't wrong with shark fin soup?"

For starters, sharks killed for this dish suffer immensely. The demand for this Asian soup means the rest of the shark has little value compared to the fins. So around the world, sharks are hooked through the mouth and hauled aboard fishing boats. Their dorsal, tail and pectoral fins are often hacked off while they're still alive, before they are thrown back into the sea. Finless and unable to swim, they sink to the ocean floor, where they slowly and painfully die from suffocation (sharks need to keep moving to push water through their gills to breathe), blood loss or are eaten alive by other fish.

And if that weren't bad enough, in the last 40 years some species of shark have declined by as much as 95%! Sharks are literally getting wiped out! While finning live sharks is illegal in Australia, shark fins are still exported and imported from here every day. This is despite the fact that most shark species in Aussie waters are endangered or vulnerable!

So if you'd rather see sharks swimming in oceans (ok, maybe not too close to us) than floating in a bowl of soup, here's a simple way to help:

• Keep an eye out for Asian restaurants that serve shark fin soup. If you find one, go in and politely tell them that sharks suffer and die for shark fin soup, and that you won't eat at their restaurant until they remove it from the menu.

Who wants sharks to suffer for a bowl of soup? Who wants a species to become extinct for a 'delicacy'? No one.