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February 26, 2007

San Francisco Shark Smuggling Scandal

Shark finning is a cruel and wasteful practice of catching wild sharks, chopping off their fins (for soup or traditional medicine) and throwing the rest of the shark back in the ocean.

When I hear about finning, I first (and somewhat erroneously) think of foreign fishing vessels. Ones closer to the shark-fin market, primarily Asian. That's not to say I don't think that the Americas aren't doing their own nasty part when it comes to hurting marine wildlife, sharks included. The US plays a significant part in the worldwide overfishing and by-catch dilemmas,and we also import shark fins and shark liver oil. I just assume that we have more regulation of finning.

So hearing about this particularly evil shark smuggling ring operating in my own local area has made me beyond disgusted and not just because the ring-leader says God made him do it. We live in one of the most prized marine ecological areas in the world and yet still people do stupid, terrible things like this, just to make a buck.

Leopard sharks in the San Francisco Bay Area will benefit from fines totaling nearly a million U.S. dollars—money resulting from the bust of a massive shark-smuggling ring that had been operating out of a local church.

...

Over the span of more than a decade, the smugglers had pulled thousands of baby leopard sharks from the waters near San Francisco, California. The animals were sold alive to pet stores and private buyers throughout the United States and abroad.

"It's the largest investigation of shark poaching in U.S. history," said Roy Torres, a special agent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service's Office of Law Enforcement in Pacific Grove, California.

Last Monday Kevin Thompson—the 48-year-old pastor of the Bay Area Family Church in San Leandro and the poaching ringleader—was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay a fine of U.S. $100,000.

Five other people were convicted in the two-year investigation and were ordered to pay a combined total of $310,000.

...

Following the bust, 19 baby leopard sharks originating from the San Francisco Bay had been delivered to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where the settlement was announced.

Four of the sharks were on display that day. Nine had been returned to the ocean, and the rest had died.

Lisa Nichols, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in San Diego, California, said that "we estimate anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 sharks have been collected over the last decade."

More At: National Geographic: Shark-Smuggling Bust Nets $1 Million for Habitat Protection

It takes almost a decade for a female leopard shark to reach sexual maturity, which is very slow for a fish species. Yet the smugglers were harvesting pregnant female leopard sharks and cutting their babies out of them. The adult females were too big to ship and sell, so they were discarded while the young ones were sold to pet shops. By targeting females and the young, the smugglers may have had a serious impact on the reproductive capacity of future generations of this harmless shark living in the Bay Area.

Leopard sharks live only the west coast of North America and are already at risk and are protected by numerous laws. The endangered wildlife black market is second only to the illegal drug market in the US.

Posted by sorsha at February 26, 2007 1:46 PM