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California Bans Shark Fin Sales

  • Spence Cooper
  • September 13, 2011

Last week, the California Senate passed the California Shark Protection Act (AB 376) introduced by State Assemblyman Paul Fong and State Assemblyman Jared Huffman. The act, headed to the governor’s office for his signature, bans the sale, distribution and possession of shark fins.

Shark fin sales are also banned in Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and some parts of Canada, as well as the Bahamas and Honduras. Last week, the city of Toronto also voted to support a city-wide ban on the sales and consumption of shark fins.

Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy in many Asian-American cultures and some opponents of the legislation in California claimed it was an affront on Asian-American culture.

“It is time to stop serving a soup that is driving sharks to extinction. The cultural issue is very minor compared to the major environmental devastation of eliminating sharks for our world’s oceans,” Assemblyman Fong said.

Fong added Shark fins can be worth more than $600 per pound and are more sought after than shark meat, which is worth about $1 per pound. The fins are removed and often the shark’s body is thrown back into the ocean where it slowly bleeds out and dies.

According to Stop Shark Finning.net, a web site dedicated to alerting people to the problem of shark finning, every year tens of millions of sharks die a slow death because of finning.

California Bans Shark Fin SalesFrom the web site: “Finning is the inhumane practice of hacking off the shark’s fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea. The sharks either starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown (if they are not in constant movement their gills cannot extract oxygen from the water). Shark fins are being ‘harvested’ in ever greater numbers to feed the growing demand for shark fin soup, an Asian ‘delicacy’.

“Not only is the finning of sharks barbaric, but their indiscriminate slaughter at an unsustainable rate is pushing many species to the brink of extinction.”

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