Brussels, 22/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - Marine conservation NGOs the Shark Alliance and Oceana, on Monday 21 November, welcomed the European Commission proposal which aims to block the loopholes in the Community ban on the finning of sharks. Finning is the wasteful practice of removing the shark's fins before throwing the animal back into the sea (EUROPE 10499).
The Shark Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 conservation, scientific, and recreational organisations dedicated to restoring and conserving shark populations, says that the Commission's proposal is “a positive step toward the much-needed protection of sharks”. Sandrine Polti, shark policy adviser to the Pew Environment Group and the Shark Alliance, argues that the responsibility now lies with the fisheries ministers and members of the European Parliament for all 27 EU member states to adopt the Commission proposal, which she sees as “the only reliable way of ensuring that sharks are not finned”.
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), millions of sharks are finned every year across the entire globe. The current EU regulation, which was adopted in 2003, is “too lenient to ensure that finning is not continuing undetected and unpunished”, the Shark Alliance says.
The Commission proposal would ensure that sharks caught by EU vessels or in EU waters would be landed with the fins still attached to the bodies.
Oceana also hailed the Commission proposal and was delighted that the advice of experts worldwide had been heeded: “Landing sharks with their fins still naturally attached is the only possible way to guarantee that finning does not occur”, said Ricardo Aguilar, Research Director for Oceana in Europe. “The current 'ban' has been of little value for shark management and conservation, because loopholes make it impossible to even detect whether finning occurs”, Oceana goes on. “If all sharks must be landed with their fins attached, it will be much easier to identify the species caught, and therefore, to gather critical data about the status of shark populations”, Aguilar says.
Shark fins are the key ingredient in a traditional and expensive Asian soup. The EU, particularly Spain, is one of the world's largest suppliers of shark fins to Asia.
Hong Kong's oldest hotel chain, the Peninsula Hotels Groups, has decided no longer to sell sharks fins in any of its nine prestige establishments from January 2012. (LC/transl.rt)