Yes, we have starving children in Africa and decapitations in Saudi Arabia. That also should not be 21st century, but that is humans responsible for other humans, it's a totally different subject, it's very complicated. But this... this is simple. It's a bunch of "humans" murdering intelligent animals for money, which they don't truly need and for food, which they don't actually eat.
I will not make the case here not to kill any animals (although...), because i currently eat meat; and I won't make it like a 10-commendments thing either, I just want you to realise this for yourself:
1. Animals with self-awareness. There is a limited number of species with proved self-awareness, like chimpanzees, elephants, some cetaceans (killer whales /bottlenose dolphins) and a few others. I would say this makes them pretty special by itself. They realise they exist in this world and they realise they can be seen by others and they want to fit in and so on. Chimps are taught the sign language and when they have kids they teach it to them; parrots are not just memorising words, they can understand them and use them in sentences. I would say that's pretty human like.
The counter argument to this would be that i am being "racist" and i accept murdering of other species just because they are not smart and they are not human-like. That is true, i am being "racist" in this case, but we have to start somewhere, and i chose to start with those cases where animals realise what we are doing to them.
When you steal a baby killer whale from their parents and then you release the parents, the parents won't run away. They will follow you and wait for you to return their baby and communicate with him, while you're dragging him away to an aquarium or worse.
2. The "cute and cuddly" reasoning. I heard this reasoning a few times lately and it basically says that activists for the "Save the dolphins" movement favour the cute and cuddly animals and they don't really care for the other species, like sharks.
Me, I support the "cute and cuddly" reasoning, but only from the human mind perspective. What i am saying is that objectively, this shouldn't matter. After all, killer whales are pretty killery. However, you have to be pretty sick in the head to murder the family dog for food, after he's been your companion for so long, after he was waiting for you when you came home from work and he played with your kid and he rested his head on your stomach when your stomach ached.
Very much like that, I consider the human race to be pretty sick in the head to slaughter dolphins, after you saw Flipper (bad thing, but it made you happy), after they splashed you at Seaworld (bad thing, but it made you happy) and after you trained them to help autistic kids (still a bad thing but it made your autistic kid happy).
Also, sharks are not that smart, they are basically driven by instinct. Still, it is a wild animal and shouldn't be killed just so some can have their fancy shark fin soup.
There's much more to say but that's all I had to say for now and if you want to help, just don't go to SeaWorld or any aquarium that has dolphins/killer whales and make other people aware of this.
If you want to help even more, you can visit http://www.dolphinproject.org and you can sign a petition or donate. You can also watch several movies and read several books on this subject, here's a few:
The Cove Blackfish Death at SeaWorld