Since young, I was taught to enjoy eating one of the most valued delicacies in my culture: shark’s fin soup. While it used to be exclusively consumed by royalties, the rise in standard of living in recent decades led to an explosion in demand for shark’s fin soup. This inevitably led to overfishing and proliferation of “finning”, a wasteful and inhumane procedure of cutting the fins of sharks and thereafter disposing the rest of their finless bodies back into the ocean, where they suffocate due to the inability to swim. “Wingless guardians” is a metaphor I imagined for numerous sharks that were unfortunately finned and left to die. Throughout the piece, there are many “sighs” represented by the saxophone and percussion. Though sharks are not known to make sounds, I hope to depict their struggle through the agonizing cries in the piece.