Obama Angers Marine Conservationists with Controversial Shark Soup Order

In honor of Presidents Day yesterday, I looked back on the sometimes rocky relationship between the outdoors and the Oval Office.

When elected officials create photo ops in an effort to show that they are just average citizens things often go wrong. Take George W. Bush for instance. In 1994 he invited the media along on a dove hunt as he tried to woo the hunting vote. Bush shot a killdeer, a protected songbird, that flew by and he was ticketed on the spot by Texas game wardens. He paid a $130 fine.

Obama had one of those moments this past week in San Francisco. He dropped by the Great Eastern restaurant in Chinatown and ordered some buns and dumplings to go providing a photo op.

Someone didn’t do their homework. The restaurant serves shark fin soup. Shark fin soup stirs the anger of many conservationists because of the illegal practice of cutting off the fins of sharks and throwing them back in the water alive.

Embarrassing to Obama is that conservationists are pointing out that he was he who signed the Shark Conservation Act into law last January. That act bans shark finning.

White House press secretary Jay Carney says the President wasn’t aware that the controversial soup was on the menu.

Mike Bolton

Mike Bolton, 56, served as the outdoors writer for the Birmingham News for 25 years until his retirement in 2009. He won the AP Sweepstakes Award for best sports story in Alabama on eight occasions and his stories on the Cahaba River were nominated for a Pulitizer Prize. He has also contributed to Sporting Classics, Bassmaster Magazine, Buckmasters Magazine and other national pubications.