A recent paper published by the scientific journal Marine Policy estimated that 100 million sharks are killed per year (the paper said the number could be as high as 270 million).

If you’re wondering, sharks kill about 12 people per year.

The main culprit is the black market for shark fins in China and the surrounding territories, where shark fin soup is a delicacy and shark fins are often believed to have mystical healing powers.

Photo: reefs.com

Most “finned” sharks are thrown back into the ocean, where they are unable to properly maneuver. They either sink to the ocean floor and suffocate or are eaten by other predators.

If you break down 100 million annual deaths, it gives you about 11,417 sharks killed every hour (more than 190 sharks every minute).

This infographic from Joe Chernov and Robin Richards at Adventure Journal illustrates these staggering numbers better than any words…

“What do you think should be done?”

That was the obvious question that Mr. Pingree, the principle of Her Lady of the River Cross Elementary School asked Ms Higgins, the matron over the girls.

Ms Higgins, who usually existed in a higher state of perpetual fluster than the typical woman of her years only threw up her hands in abject frustration, a frown of the most dignified comfluxedness that she could muster pulling the corners of her mouth down to the point Mr. Pingree thought her lips might fall off.

Mr. Pingree smiled on the inside…..

“I’m at my wits end” she chirped, swinging her arms widely in a dramatic display of contested submission before dropping them back to clasp together into a tangle of twisting phalangial turmoil.

Mr. Pingree, a jolly, absent-minded man at the best of times was on the downhill slope of 60 years old. He was…