Deira Fish Market

I had gone to the Deira Fish market last weekend as a part of a group called the 'Young Environmental Journalists'. This group consists of a number of students from different schools (Rebekka; AK; Caroline; George; Felicia and myself), who aim to become environmental journalists for Tawasul (http://www.tawasul.ning.com) and also people who will train us (Ernst, Emmanuelle, Dale, Antonie, Vessella, Claire, Barbara, Dawn, Nessrine, ) by spreading awareness about fishes and how the we can ignite the fire that brings about change.

As we entered the Fish market, we were greeted by rude stares and whispers. Ignoring that, we moved on to be welcomed by people holding fishes in their hands ready to sell them to us. Knowing that the situation would take place and knowing what to do about that, we refused with a fake smile on our faces and moved on. We had already begun to see some of the most upsetting scenes that I now wish to never have encountered because they made me feel so sad... We had started to see baby hammours and baby sharks, adult hammours and adult sharks, blue fin tuna, and lines and stocks of other fish that made the place stink.

Trying to behave like tourists, we clicked pictures and refused all offers of fish with fake smiles. One such offer caught our ears and left a big scar in my heart : the baby sharks. We asked them how much each baby shark caused, they said it was not more than dhs. 10/- (that is just sad because they have kept a price so low for something so beautiful the nature has provided to us). Then we asked them how many of those baby sharks could they give us, and they said they could supply how many ever we needed.

''100 baby sharks ?''
''Yes 100''
''By today ?''
''Yeah yeah''
was the conversation between our group and the people selling the baby sharks..

Unable to stand the grief of those sharks, we moved on to see this Dubai Municipality board that said :
''CATCHING and MARKETING of UNDERSIZED FISH is PROHIBITED. VIOLATERS will be PROSECUTED and PENALIZED. FISH CONFISCATED.''
Imagine the irony at the fish market when we read the board and saw the baby sharks and baby hammours being sold at the same time..

Moving on, other significant things I remember were when we saw them slicing the sharks fins off and when we asked them how much a kilo costed. ''Only dhs 200/-'', they said.

It was about time to leave by then, and we saw more sharks that held us back. There were about 50 hammerheads lined up, some even just giving birth to baby hammerheads.. Being the Hindi translator for the group, I asked the fish selling people how much each hammerhead cost, and they said that it would cost only dhs1500 - 2000/- with the fins and all. When we asked them about the Bullsharks, they said that it would cost dhs 6000 per shark (they exaggerated it so much that it seemed like a big amount, but it is nothing compared to how much the shark costs to the ocean..). When we finally saw the guitarsharks, they said they cost only dhs 3000...

In the end, before getting in our cars to leave, with some tear-stained faces we saw another line of bullsharks in the parking lot, getting ready to get their fins sliced... It was just one of the most upsetting days I had had in my life.

There are not more than 10% of the sharks there were in this world originally.. And if these fishermen keep fishing these sharks the same way at the same rate, there will be no sharks in a few years and the next generation will curse us for the damage done to the beautiful blue life.. Lets stop this by spreading awareness to shopkeepers and managers in restaurants who are not aware or who are not bothered because people have sold sharks meat mislabeled for other meat like beef or dolphin. Also, hammours under the size of 45 cm. are not to be sold as they are undersized fish. Managers of restaurants do not know about endangered fish and sustainable fish, so let's do all we can by going on http://www.choosewisely.ae and making people aware..