Pulled from the water, a shark thrashes helplessly as its fins are hacked from its body. Mutilated and in pain, the shark is thrown back into the ocean. Eventually it either bleeds to death or suffocates.

Each year this torture is how millions of sharks around the world needlessly meet their end. All so their fins can be sold in soups served at expensive restaurants and fancy weddings. The shark fin trade is cruel, unsustainable, and it’s being fueled in large part by the tuna industry.

Millions of sharks are killed every year by tuna vessels — either as bycatch or from illegal shark finning practices. The US tuna brands that hire these vessels, like Bumble Bee Tuna, aren’t taking steps to stop it.

That’s why Greenpeace kicked off Shark Week last week with a public campaign to get Bumble Bee to clean up its act. And with nearly half of all shark species currently at risk of extinction, there isn’t much time.

Help Greenpeace send 30,000 messages to Bumble Bee CEO Chris Lischewski telling him to ensure that his company’s products don’t come with the hidden cost of millions of dead sharks.

Killing sharks is no accident — and it appears that it may even be part of the business plan for companies like Bumble Bee.

For many tuna boats, shark fins are a source of extra income for fishermen who are not being paid a living wage. For the tuna companies, allowing fishing practices that are guaranteed to catch sharks is one way to get away with paying fishermen so poorly — shark fins are their “tips” and provide supplemental income.

Bumble Bee likes to say it follows the guidelines of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), but talk is cheap. Pointing to these guidelines is useless unless the company can show that its supply chain — its own operations as well as the vessels owned by Chris Lischewski himself — AND all the independent vessels that it buys fish from are not finning sharks.

Fishermen need to be paid a living wage and companies like Bumble Bee need to move away from a reliance on unsustainable fishing practices. Until that happens, nothing is going to change. As an industry leader, Bumble Bee has the ability to set an example for the other major companies to follow.

Tell Bumble Bee CEO Chris Lischewski that shark finning and unsustainable fishing are destroying the oceans and is bad for business.

The ocean ecosystems that we all depend on are rapidly destabilizing as overfishing and pollution destroy the fine-tuned balance of species. Saving sharks from the painful fate of finning and the wasteful practices of unsustainable fishing by getting US tuna companies like Bumble Bee to address the problem is part of restoring that balance.

Great strides have been made to protect sharks recently. Shark finning is already prohibited on US vessels, and several other countries have also banned the practice. States like New York and California have banned the sale of shark fin soup, and a growing number of airlines have stopped transporting shark fins.

Ultimately, the shark fin trade will end. The question is, will it be because we changed the actions of companies like Bumble Bee, or because we drove the species to extinction?

Together we can make sure the answer isn’t extinction. Take action today. Sign the Petition to Chris Lischewski, CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, here.

Photo: Alex Hofford