Shark fins in Taiwan - pic by Shawn Heinrichs. Click for detailTaiwan has recently announced that they want to ban Shark finning.
I was under-impressed then and having recently discovered the sheer scope of Taiwan's declared Shark "bycatch" in the WCPFC, I'm even less impressed now. Having depleted their own seas, Taiwan's appalling distant-water fleets scour the global oceans and the Shark fins (certainly NOT the meat and skin!) are offloaded in distant ports and then airlifted home.
That's where the massacre happens and I very much doubt than any Taiwanese fins-attached policy will be enforced that far from home.
Plus, legislation like that is archaic and comes much too late for any endangered Shark species, the more as it has become painfully evident that most countries simply lack the resources, and the political will for ever monitoring and enforcing those rules.
What is required now are fishing bans, not band-aid solutions.
Kudos to Matt for having cut through the BS.
1 comment:
The shark conservation movement is maturing. Have the finning bans worked in practice, or are they just theoretical? Has the United States killed fewer sharks as a result of the Shark Conservation Act, or are there just more shark carcasses in animal feed and landfills? You are correct. It is time to move beyond finning. How a shark is killed does not matter because the result is still a dead shark.
Post a Comment