Hawaii Senator Introduces Bill Banning Sale of Shark Fins

(Dive Travel Business News - May 6, 2010 ) -- A proposal to ban the trade of shark fins was introduced by Sen. Clayton Hee on April 28, 2010 in the Hawaii Legislature. Senate Bill 2169 prohibits the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins in the state of Hawaii.

State Sen. Clayton Hee is rallying support for the legislation he introduced that would make Hawaii a leader in the global fight to end shark finning. The practice involves cutting the fins off sharks, then discarding the live animals in the ocean to drown. The debate over shark finning in Hawaii is a controversial issue in the legislature. But Hee says shark fishing is insignificant when compared with the total fish take in Hawaii, and longline fishermen do not even fish for sharks.

Some House lawmakers do not want to prohibit an established Chinese cultural tradition. However, former Hawaii first lady Vicky Cayetano, who joined Hee at a news conference yesterday, says eating shark fin soup continues to be simply a display of affluence, not a Chinese cultural tradition. "This actually started way back in the Ming Dynasty when the Ming emperor wanted to have something so far removed, so difficult to catch that it was, quite frankly, a status symbol," she said.

Cayetano says Hawaiian and other Pacific island cultures revere sharks as gods. And while Hawaiians do not prohibit killing sharks, "it's not done every day," said Leighton Tseu, a member of the Royal Order of Kamehameha. "It's done in sacredness." And any object made using the remains of a shark, like a shark skin drum, is sacred, he said.

The shark fin industry kills 70 million to 89 million sharks per year and is projected to grow 7 percent annually, said Carl Meyer, assistant researcher at University of Hawaii's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. Overfishing of sharks for their fins is causing an imbalance in the oceans. The majority of the fins wind up in Hong Kong and are then sold throughout China, Meyer said. Meyer added that the sharks cannot reproduce fast enough to keep up with the shark fin industry because they take a long time to mature and produce few offspring.

** This RSS Feed is brought to you by www.DiveTravelBusinessNews.com **