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Shark-conference
speakers urge
ban on finning

By Pat Gee
Star-Bulletin

Scientists, conservationists and some fishermen are meeting in Waikiki this week to try and put a stop to the practice of shark-finning.

Dr. Samuel H. Gruber of Miami's Bimini Biological Field Station, one of the keynote speakers at four-day International Shark Conference 2000, said sharks should be regarded as more than soup fodder or "big, dangerous fishes ... They are magnificent, highly evolved creatures and we are killing them off. An ocean without sharks will be a very sick ocean."

According to Bob Endreson of the Western Pacific Fisheries Coalition, one of the conference organizers, the prohibition of shark finning in the United States is not the "end-all, it's the beginning" of management policies, outlined in a draft proposed by the American Fisheries Society at the conference.

(The state House Ocean Recreation and Marine Resources Committee has passed a bill allowing shark-finning in Hawaii only if a shark is brought to shore whole.)

He said local fishermen would not be economically affected by the prohibition of shark-finning. A National Marine Fisheries Service study says fishermen would still make money from tuna and swordfish, Endreson said.

But James Cook, chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, said a ban on finning in the United States would reduce the income of Hawaii fishermen by $1.2 million to $1.5 million a year. If all shark-fin products were banned in the United States, which would mainly affect Hawaii, "we would potentially lose $50 million per year" spent on fuel for fishing vessels and related services, Cook added.

Cook, a commercial fisherman and vice-president of Pacific Ocean Producers, said in a telephone interview that "they know very well that less than 2 percent of the sharks are finned while alive. Eighty-six percent are brought to the boat alive, then killed and finned."

"If killing for food is cruel, then it's cruel," he said. Cook likened the killing of sharks to killing other fish, cows and other animals for food.