Ban on shark finning in U.S. waters on table in Congress
January 12, 2009
Shark conservation bill
A shark conservation bill introduced last week in Congress would strengthen the ban on finning, in which the valuable fins are sliced off a live shark and the rest discarded.
The fins generally are exported to Asia, where shark fin soup is a delicacy served at weddings and other major events.
The Shark Conservation Act of 2009 would ban the removal of shark fins at sea in U.S. waters."A growing number of shark populations are threatened, and yet the demand for shark fins remains strong," Sonja Fordham, shark conservation director for the Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement. "Loopholes have allowed some U.S. shark finning to go unpunished."
Sun-SentinelHere is the bill:
HR 81.
This is a repeat of the 2008 Shark Conversation Act,
HR 5741, which passed the House last June, but was withheld from a vote in the Senate.
Shark finning is cited as a primary cause of the global decline in shark population. There has been some local debate around here about the finning and shark dives (now illegal in FL, but the Bahamas are only minutes away). Those in favor of the finning say you can't ask a culture to change after 500-600 years. But its a Chinese culture, not US, and this law only applies to the US. Unlike the open shark dives, this one is more enforceable as it applies to any boat registered in the US or which enters US waters with shark fins.
