The letter sent out by Ms. Lim Ee Jin, the Assistant Vice President, Marketing Communications & Public Relations for the hotel reads as follows:

“Dear [name].

Thank you very much for your email and valuable feedback.

The views of our customers are very important to us and we have taken note of concerns which have been expressed about the shark’s fin mooncakes. We have therefore decided to withdraw this promotion, with immediate effect. We are currently working to develop alternative options for our guests which will not involve the use of shark’s fin.

Your support is much appreciated and we hope to welcome you back to the revitalized Meritus Mandarin Singapore, and to the Pine Court Chinese Restaurant, in the near future.

If you have further queries, please feel free to contact me.”

Our thanks to Ms Lim for her prompt response, and to everyone who took a moment to write, call, or visit the hotel to express your views. We know there were a lot of you!

Please take a moment now to send a note of thanks to Ms Lim and the hotel at limeejin@meritus-hotels.com to let her know that we appreciate the responsiveness from the hotel management.

Of course, as some people rightly pointed out in the discussion of our original post, this alone will not change the world. It’s important to keep speaking up and letting merchants know how we feel about this issue and other similar ones.

For those of you in Singapore or who are regular visitors, there’s a new Facebook group that’s been started from this experience, with specific information about specific shark-fin related promotions and dishes offered by hotels in Singapore. Take a look, and consider helping out.

Yes, that’s right. Shark fins in mooncakes. What’ll they think of next?

As described by website soshiok.com (part of Singapore Press Holdings), these heavenly desserts are perfect for “corporate gifts and special treats for yourself”. At only S$40+ for two shark fin mooncakes, who can possibly resist?

To quote soshiok.com’s recommendation: “Yes, you can feel the decadent crunch of the fins mingling with nuts, pork and juicy candied melon as you sink your teeth into this ultimate treat (Highly recommended).”

So all you silly conservationists and divers out there, stop whining about endangered animals and go grab this irresistible treat immediately. Heck, at only S$40 for a chance to chow down on rapidly disappearing animals, you should really stock up now while supplies last.

If you need directions to the hotel, click here. Or, according to soshiok.com, you can email dine.tms@meritus-hotels.com or call +65-6831-6285 to reserve your shark fin mooncakes.

But more importantly, Essie, one of the talented chefs aboard the Golden Dawn, accompanied Craig, and has stayed on for a two-week intensive Thai cuisine cooking class.

So basically…the next time you’re on Golden Dawn, Essie will have added more Thai dishes to her already extensive repertoire of yummy food!

MV Golden Dawn is a FiNS Featured Merchant.

In their own words:

“We are a PADI MSDT / SSI DIVE LEADER and PADI DM couple looking for a job in South East Asia.

Roser (DM) speaks fluent Spanish, English, German and Portuguese and Andy can teach in English. Andy has experience teaching, guiding and managing dive centers all over the world since 1996. Roser loves guiding and on the last job found a new pipehorse and the second known sighting of a Walea pygmy seahorse, only seen before in the Walea Dive Resort. Between us we have more than 5000 dives.

We are currently in Indonesia and can start work next week or next month.

If you are interested please write to roser1979@yahoo.es. We will be happy to send you our CVs.”

The consensus for second choice was for an absolutely delightful image of two spotted garden eels submitted by Marco Waagmeester. Getting a single garden eel to sit still for a photo is difficult enough, so two in one photo is amazing!

Tony’s highlighted image for June is a well-executed portrait of jellyfish taken by Eugene Lim. Eugene’s submission is a good example of balancing ambient light with artificial lighting for a difficult-to-light, white subject.

Thanks to everyone who submitted photos in June, and we’re looking forward to seeing more terrific images! Check out the FiNS Flickr group to see the latest uploads.

If you are lucky, you might find yourself diving with a pretty, large female tiger shark on the famous Shark Dive in Fiji, Beqa Lagoon.

She is named “Scarface”, and she has been a regular visitor on the Shark Dive for the last seven to eight years. Everyone is thrilled, both guests and staff, whenever she decides to drop by for a fishhead-snack, along with the 15-40 bull sharks that come in to feed on every dive.

Scarface left this dive site in November last year, heavily pregnant, to give birth somewhere else. She came back on April 27th, after a five-month “maternity leave”, and she’s been around since.

There is no need to be scared if you meet her! She is very sweet, slow and mellow, and she is only there to get her piece of free fish…and to say hello to her old friend, Rusi the Fijian shark feeder, whom she has been around for years.

Some of the other sharks you normally encounter on a day of shark diving include the friendly tawny nurse sharks at 30 meters, the fast-swimming grey reef sharks that come blasting in at ten meters, and finally the whitetip and blacktip reef sharks at around four meters. This last part of the first dive must be the best safety stop ever!

On the second dive of the day, big bulls and sometimes a tiger shark dominate at 16 meters. Occasionally you will also see silvertip sharks and sickle fin lemon sharks on this dive. If you want to experience diving with different types of sharks, this is definitely the place to be.

View more pictures from a day of shark-diving in Fiji.

In his own words: “I found this goby at about four meters just sitting on a log. When I go closer, I realized that she was laying eggs. With my Olympus 5050, I photographed and watched it for almost 60 minutes, hoping to see some behavior, but she just sat there not moving. Maybe she was tired after laying those eggs…”

Indeed.

Kasawari-Lembeh Resort is a FiNS Featured Merchant.

Savings are good for July departures only, so hurry and contact Tim at SCUBAsia.com for details.

The area will provide an opportunity for the region’s dive centres, resorts and liveaboard operators to promote their individual services in a single area, making it easier for visitors to learn more about diving in Asia. Among the attractions will be lucky draws with fabulous prizes, audio-visual presentations, and the launch of the 2010 Edition of Pocket Guide DIVE Thailand.

Confirmed participants from the region at this stage include: Mermaid Liveaboards and Scuba Cat Diving from Thailand; Tasik Divers and Two Fish Divers from North Sulawesi; Fish ‘n Fins from Palau; Scuba Nation from Cambodia; and The Papua New Guinea Divers Association from PNG.

Please check out the show’s official exhibitor list for up-to-date information.

The Asia Pacific Showcase will be located in Hall 10, the larger of the two halls, and is being co-ordinated by Paul Lees from Pocket Guide Publications. If you would like to join as an exhibitor, please contact Paul Lees info@diveguidethailand.com.

Actually, calling the Code-X yacht project a “gadget” is sort of like calling a Tesla a nice little toy. Well…actually, if you’re rich enough to own either, you can probably call them whatever you want.

Anyway, according to the (ever-so-chic, all-black) website for the Swiss company building this sleek Batman-esque cruise-mobile, the Code-X yacht will feature two Formula 1 engines along with two solar-powered ones.

Presumably, the quiet, zero-emissions engines will take you in and out of port, after which you crank the twin fossil-fuel guzzlers for “the pleasure of high speeds on open waters!” (Ok, we confess. We don’t get it. The concept is sort of like creating a cross between a Prius and a Humvee.)

Whatever the case, the company’s website is worth a gander, and if you happen to be in the market for a new yacht to tide you through mid-life crisis, there’s contact information on the site so you can ask for a quote (and an explanation of the concept).