In 1995, the Hawai`i-based longline fishing fleet caught 101,773 sharks. Roughly a third of them were finned — a process that often involves cutting fins off sharks and then returning the animals, still alive, to the ocean. Unable to navigate, the sharks soon perish.
That same year, roughly 50,000 pounds of dried shark fins were landed in Honolulu. The estimated value of the product is $750,000 — or $15 a pound, which makes it among the highest-value fish flesh on the wholesale market. According to Brooks Takenaka of the United Fishing Agency, a fish auction house in Honolulu, “Occasionally we have some tunas sell for $15 a pound, deepsea bottomfish go for $15 a pound sometime. It’s not a figure that is all that common, however.”
Overall, the number of sharks finned in 1995 by the Hawai`i fleet was more than double what it was in 1994. Even more sharks were caught (and finned) by foreign fishing vessels in international waters outside the 200-mile limit of the U.S. exclusive economic zone. Many of these foreign vessels transship their shark fins to U.S. vessels in international waters. As described by the National Marine Fisheries Service Honolulu Laboratory, the process of transshipment occurs in this manner:
The dried shark fin “is transferred on the fishing grounds to a foreign ‘mothership’ which collects shark fins from these longliners for storage (and further drying). Some of the mothership vessels have met with domestic U.S. vessels in international waters to trans-ship the dried shark fin product into Honolulu. Upon off-loading, the shark fins are containerized and shipped overseas.”
NMFS reports that 12 such transshipments occurred in 1995, undertaken by three domestic vessels. “The number of recorded transshipments has risen from only 2 in 1992 and 6 in 1994.” NMFS regulations require the U.S. vessels receiving the foreign shark fins to provide NMFS with a report (including the number of pounds of shark fin received), and apparently the U.S. vessels are complying. However, NMFS will not disclose the total pounds of shark fins transshipped by these vessels. “Total pounds transshipped is confidential,” NMFS says, “because all shipments go through one shoreside company.” Disclosure of the volume of fins transshipped would, therefore, violate the agency’s prohibition on disclosure of proprietary information.
The demand for shark fins arises mainly in Asia, where shark fin is considered a delicacy in certain soups and other foods and commands a premium price. In Hong Kong, shark fin soup has been reported to cost from $25 to as much as $80 a bowl. As Asian nation’s economies improved in the 1980s, the demand for shark fin rose as well.
Much of the demand was met by East Coast fishermen. By 1993, however, they had pretty much fished waters off the Southeastern U.S. coast clean of the larger sharks, prompting the National Marine Fisheries Service to set quotas and prohibit finning in U.S. waters along the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico.
Until recently, shark finning was not a significant component of the long-line fleet in Hawai`i. When a shark was caught, it was generally returned to the water, since shark meat is not a high-value item. When East Coast sources of shark fin became unavailable, shark finning appears to have become more widespread in the Pacific.
The volume of shark fins landed by the Hawai`i-based longline fleet has increased dramatically in recent years. Xi He, a researcher at the University of Hawai`i, and Chris Boggs, of NMFS, examined logbook data from longline vessels and determined that the proportions of blue shark that were caught, finned and discarded “increased steadily from 0.0 in 1991 to about 0.3 in 1995.”
Lack of Concern
To date, there has been little concern expressed by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council about the impact of shark finning on the populations of fish within the council’s jurisdiction. At the council’s most recent meeting, members expressed dismay over a preliminary report of a vessel that had 80 metric tons of shark fin aboard when it landed on Guam.
Yet in the main, concerns over the practice have gone unremarked by the council. In fact, not even the regional director of NMFS, who holds a voting seat on the council, has been able to get the council’s attention on this issue. On March 1, 1996, the director, Hilda Diaz-Soltero, wrote then-council chairman Ed Ebisui, expressing her desire that the council consider prohibiting “the landing of shark fins without associated carcasses.”
“The National Marine Fisheries Service considers ‘finning’ (the landing of fins only with the discard of carcasses) to be extremely wasteful. The practice has been prohibited for U.S. fishers in the exclusive economic zone of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The State of California also has prohibited the practice. I believe a similar practice should be imposed in the Pacific Ocean.
“As far as is known, the extent of finning in the longline and other fisheries … is not great at this time, so there would not be significant losses from eliminating this practice. The prohibition also will add to protection from biological risk as it will discourage the senseless killing of sharks that can be rapidly overfished due to low reproductive rates.”
The council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee considered the matter when it met in April. In its report to the council, it stated: “The SSC believes that the high bycatches of sharks in the longline fishery, the limited information on mortality, concerns about wastage related to the ‘finning’ issue, and shark bycatch in general merit more complete collection and analysis of data. The suggestion of simply prohibiting ‘finning’ immediately seems premature without further information about the fishermen, the markets, and levels of survival.”
According to Rod McInnis, a spokesman for Diaz-Soltero at NMFS’ southwest regional office, Ebisui responded formally to Diaz-Soltero’s request in April by asking that NMFS gather more information on the subject.
More recently, the non-profit Center for Marine Conservation has asked the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council to consider prohibiting shark-finning. In a letter dated August 7, 1996, to then-council chairman Ed Ebisui, the CMC describes finning as “a cruel and wasteful practice.” “The Center requests the WPRFMC to place the issue of shark finning and bycatch of sharks in the longline fishery on its agenda for consideration by … the council for possible action in November.”
Volume 7, Number 4 October 1996