Yao Ming has teamed up with the conservation nonprofit WildAid to spread the word that shark fin soup bears bad news. PHOTO: Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty

Yao Ming may now be a retired professional basketball player but him making it to the  All-NBA Team five times is not a forgotten feat. That and the fact that at the time of his final season, he was the tallest active player in the NBA, at 2.29 m (7 ft 6 in). Ming, who was born in Shanghai, China, started playing for the Shanghai Sharks as a teenager. Now, miles away from the court, his life is still closely linked to the sharks – the animal kind. Ming is a strong advocate on protecting sharks and is pushing for a ban on shark fin soup, a delicacy that significantly contributes to the estimate of 1 in 4 sharks now being endangered.

The number of sharks in our seas has been steadily decreasing for decades. About 100 million sharks a year are killed — 73% of those are targeted for their fins, which are usually cut off before the shark is left to die.

That’s why Yao teamed up with the conservation nonprofit WildAid to spread the word that shark fin soup is bad news bears. Since launching with the slogan “When the buying stops, the killing can too,” a huge shift has occurred. The campaign has been credited with cutting the number of sharks killed for their fins by 50 percent. Until recently, many Chinese didn’t even know that shark fin soup came from sharks. (The Mandarin translation is “fish wing soup.”) Now, surveys show that a whopping 91% support a nationwide ban of shark fin consumption. While the ban hasn’t happened yet, the Chinese government has banned shark fin soup at its state dinners.

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