【科学60秒】鱼翅的代价
DNA Testing to Help Sharks Keep Fins
I should start this podcast off with an __1__—I have a serious problem with shark fin soup. Fishermen slice the fin off the shark and toss the creature back into the water to die. This happens to millions of sharks around the world, and some of those shark populations are endangered. Scientists have been trying to figure out which shark populations are most at risk by the __2__. Now there’s new DNA evidence that’s __3__.
Researchers used a tool called “__4__” to test samples of 62 scalloped hammerhead shark fins—an endangered species—from the Hong Kong fin market. They analyzed the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from the mother and is traceable to the sharks’ birth waters. Fifty-seven of those sharks came from Atlantic and Indo-Pacific waters, and 21 percent live in the western atlantic, where sharks’ numbers have now collapsed. The results were published online in the journal Endangered Species Research.
Scientists will bring these results to the 2010 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting. A change in the sharks designation at that meeting could lead to better protection from __5__.
——Cynthia Graber
