A complaint quietly filed last month in Miami federal court accused an exporter based in the Florida Keys, Elite Sky International, of falsely labeling some 5,666 pounds of China-bound shark fins as live Florida spiny lobsters. Another company, south Florida-based Aifa Seafood, is also under criminal investigation for similar violations, according to two people on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.
Since 2000, federal law has made it illegal to cut the fins off sharks and discard their bodies back into the ocean. However, individual states have wide leeway to decide whether or not businesses can harvest fins from dead sharks at a dock, or import them from overseas. Contrary to industry complaints about excessive regulations, the U.S. is hardly a model of sustainable shark management, said Webber. She pointed to a recent finding by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that less than 23 per cent of the 66 shark stocks in U.S. waters are safe from overfishing. The status of more than half of shark stocks isn't even known.
She said the current laws aren't enough of a deterrent in an industry where bad actors drawn by the promise of huge profits are a recurrent problem. "This operation is about much more than disrupting the despicable practice of hacking the fins off sharks and leaving them to drown in the sea to create a bowl of soup," Bobby Christine, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, said at the time.
Disgusting practice! Stop it!
If it’s free they move in a feeding frenzy to get their share ! Greedy World !!
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