Isle company fined
in shark-fin possession

It is against U.S. law to possess
a shark's fins without a carcass

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By Jaymes Song
Associated Press

As the appetite for pricey shark fin soup has grown in Asia over the past decade, so has a taste for the money to be made from the lucrative trade of selling shark fins.

"In the past five to 10 years, the market in Asia for shark fins has really just exploded," said Paul Ortiz, a senior enforcement attorney for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

While shark finning itself is legal, it is illegal in the United States to possess shark fins without a shark's carcass. The trouble is, many fishermen toss the sharks back in the water after slicing off their precious fins.

Last week, companies in Hawaii and Hong Kong were charged with illegally possessing more than 32 tons of shark fins and fined $620,000 by NOAA -- the highest civil penalty for violating the Shark Finning Prohibition Act, according to the agency.

Tran and Yu Inc., of Honolulu, Tai Loong Hong Marine Products Ltd., of Hong Kong, and Chien Tan Nguyen were charged by NOAA's Fisheries Service with 26 counts of possessing shark fins on board an American fishing vessel without the required shark carcasses. There was no listing for Tran and Yu in Honolulu.

About 64,700 pounds of shark fins were seized after federal agents boarded the Honolulu-based King Diamond II on Aug. 14 about 350 miles southwest of Mexico -- the largest seizure of shark fins in the United States since the federal law was passed in 2000.

"We are sending a clear message: Those who choose to continue in the trade of shark fins must do so within the strict requirements of federal regulations," said Mike Gonzales, special agent in charge of the National Marine Fisheries Service Office for Law Enforcement in Long Beach, Calif.

Ortiz said companies that purchase tons of shark fins from fishing vessels for $20 to $30 per kilogram can sell them in Singapore or Hong Kong for $50 per kilogram.

"The stuff is worth a lot of money and is relatively easy to move because you don't have to take particular good care of it like fish," he said. "You don't have to freeze it, it dries in the sun."

The Shark Finning Prohibition Act is a federal law that makes it illegal to possess shark fins without the corresponding carcasses. "It's not a ban on shark fin soup, it's a ban on cutting off its fin and throwing away the carcass," he said.

It also is illegal for a U.S. company to possess, purchase and sell shark fins without offloading all the shark carcasses and fins at the same time.

"For them to buy the fins, they would also have to take possession of the shark carcass," Ortiz said. "Had they done that, it would've been a legal transaction. If the shark fins weighed 32 tons, the rest of the shark carcass would've weighed 1.2 million. There's just no way you can take possession of that many shark carcasses."

Representatives of Tai Loong Hong used large sums of cash to purchase shark fins from a fleet of Korean longline fishing vessels on the high seas. The fins were loaded onto the King Diamond II and were intended to be offloaded in Guatemala or Mexico to be shipped to Hong Kong, NOAA said.

NOAA estimates about 18,000 sharks were killed for the 32 tons of shark fins, most of them from "blue sharks."

Ortiz said shark fin soup is expensive and considered a "celebratory, party" dish.

With the growth of China's economy, the demand for the dish -- which can fetch more than $100 a bowl -- has gone up.