Senate Votes to End Shark Fin Sales in the U.S.
The bill will bring an end to the commercial trade of shark fins and products containing shark fins in the U.S.
The U.S. Senate has passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act (SFSEA), bringing an end to the commercial trade of shark fins and products containing shark fins one step closer.
Each year, around 73 million sharks are slaughtered for their fins, mostly for use in shark fin soup, and with the international fin trade driving many of these top predators to extinction, this victory for sharks is long overdue.
To obtain these fins, fishermen slice them off live sharks before throwing the animals back into the sea to drown, starve, be eaten alive by other predators, or die of blood loss - this inhumane practice is known as finning.
“Finning is cruel, and it’s crushing the global shark population, which is critical to our oceans and marine ecosystem,” says US Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawai‘i, who reintroduced the standalone act in April. “I’m glad we were able to move this bill one step closer to becoming law so that we can protect more sharks from this brutal practice.”
Shark finning is already prohibited in U.S.-controlled waters, and 17 states and three U.S. territories have passed laws banning or limiting trade in shark fins. However, in the remaining states, shark fin can still be found on restaurant menus and grocery store shelves. Many of these fins are imported and come from unregulated waters or countries with unregulated shark finning and a lack of law enforcement.
The U.S. is also serving as a key transportation hub, with unfettered shark fin shipments frequently passing through U.S. ports. Some nations in Central America transport up to one-third to one-half of their shark fin exports through U.S. ports.
Sharks play a vital role in ocean ecosystems and function as indicators of ocean health, but due to overfishing and the lucrative demand for shark fin for soup, many shark populations are in steep decline. Shark and ray populations in the world’s open oceans have plummeted by 71% over the last 50 years, and more than a quarter of the world’s sharks, rays, and chimaeras are considered to be threatened.
SFSEA has been passed as part of a broader legislative package, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, S. 1260, and will now proceed to the U.S. House of Representatives, and both chambers’ leadership will negotiate the form of a final package.
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