Clinton Gets Bill Banning Shark Finning

Shark finning, cutting off a shark’s fin and throwing the dying fish back into the sea, would be banned from all U.S. waters under legislation that cleared Congress on Thursday.

“Today is the end of a long personal struggle to stop this abhorrent practice,” said Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego), who introduced the legislation two years ago.

A voice vote Thursday by the Senate sent the bill to President Clinton, who is expected to sign it. The House already passed it.

The bill is aimed mainly at Pacific Ocean fishermen supplying fins to Asian markets, where they are prized as a culinary delicacy and an aphrodisiac. Shark fin soup sells for as much as $100 a bowl in some Asian countries.

The legislation would make it illegal for a fishing boat carrying shark fins without the carcass to enter a U.S. port or to operate in the 200-mile U.S. federal water territories. Finning is often done as a side business to swordfish and tuna fishing, and small fishing operations have no room to carry carcasses, which are of little market value.

The bill also authorizes a study into shark stocks, including identifying fishing gear and practices that minimize incidental catches.

Cunningham noted that sharks are among the most biologically vulnerable species in the ocean because of their slow growth, late maturity and small number of offspring.

Russell Dunn of the Ocean Wildlife Campaign said the legislation “is critical to conserving vulnerable shark populations.” He said every year tens of thousands of sharks, often ocean blue sharks, are killed for their fins in the Pacific Ocean and that in 1998 the number of sharks finned in the waters surrounding Hawaii topped 60,000.

The sharks, which grow to about 13 feet and 400 pounds, are hauled aboard, their fins are sliced off and the sometimes still-living fish are dumped back into the sea. There they are eaten, bleed to death or sink to the bottom, where they die.

Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano signed into law a similar measure in June that says shark fins brought to Hawaiian ports must be on the shark or, if sliced off, the carcass must be stored aboard the ship.

The Commerce Department took action in 1993 to halt finning in Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico waters after it became apparent the practice was reducing shark populations. That ruling did not include fishing in the Pacific, where finning was less prevalent a decade ago.