Feds Target U.S. Firms Engaged In Lucrative But Illegal Shark Fin Trade

It’s one of the seafood industry’s most gruesome hunts. Every year, the fins of as many as 73 million sharks are sliced from the backs of the majestic sea predators, their bleeding bodies sometimes dumped back into the ocean where they are left to suffocate or die of blood loss.

Photo Insert: Dried shark fins in a fish market

But while the barbaric practice is driven by China, where shark fin soup is a symbol of status for the rich and powerful, America’s seafood industry isn’t immune from the trade, Joshua Goodman reported for the Associated Press (AP) early on August 3, 2022.

A complaint quietly filed last month in Miami federal court accused an exporter based in the Florida Keys, Elite Sky International, of falsely labeling some 5,666 pounds of China-bound shark fins as live Florida spiny lobsters.

South Florida-based Aifa Seafood, is also under criminal investigation for similar violations, according to two people on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.

The company is managed by a Chinese-American woman who in 2016 pleaded guilty to shipping more than a half-ton of live Florida lobsters to her native China without a license.

The heightened scrutiny from law enforcement comes as Congress debates a federal ban on shark fins — making it illegal to import or export even foreign-caught fins. Every year, American wildlife inspectors seize thousands of shark fins while in transit to Asia for failing to declare the shipments.

Depending on the type of shark, a single pound of fins can fetch hundreds of dollars, making it one of the priciest seafood products by weight anywhere.

“If you’re going out of business because you can no longer sell fins, then what are you actually fishing for?,” said Whitney Webber, a campaign director at Washington-based Oceana, which supports the ban.

Since 2000, federal law has made it illegal to cut the fins off sharks and discard their bodies back into the ocean. The legislation working its way through Congress would impose a near-total ban on trade in fins, similar to action taken by Canada in 2019.

The legislation, introduced in 2017 by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, has majority support in both the House and Senate.

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