Perhaps the most surprising thing to many (including me) about Hawaii’s newly adopted ban on shark fin soup, which takes effect on July 1, 2011, is that it is still legal in the U.S. at all.

The Hawaii ban, though more than a year away, includes heavy fines for anyone caught selling the soup in the state: $5,000 for a first offense, $50,000 for a second offense and up to a year in jail for a third.

Regarded a delicacy by many in China and Japan, the tasteless soup is mostly an extravagant addition to menus at high-end birthdays, weddings and business affairs.

That the soup’s popularity results in 70 to 100 million sharks being killed each year doesn’t seem to faze many in Asia. But to witness a shark being finned is the height of environmental and animal abuse: They are slashed off the still-living animal with sharp knives and its still breathing carcass tossed back into the ocean, to sink to the floor and die.

In Hawaii a bowl of shark fin soup—tasteless, with the fin is not eaten but thrown out like chicken bones—can be had for $17; at fancy affairs in Hong Kong, which traffics between 50 and 80 percent of shark fins in the world, a bowl can fetch $1,000.

In a confusing and obviously tough-to-enforce legislative move dating back to the Clinton administration, the U.S. banned shark fins from being imported into the country on ships registered in the U.S.—but not foreign vessels. It also mandated that fins could not be imported without being attached to the shark.

Apparently that law has been ignored, and Hawaii, a state that entertains many visitors from Japan and China, has stepped up as the first state to ban fins outright. Like the U.S., many countries ban shark finning in their waters but laws on the open ocean are easy to evade. A national Shark Conservation Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, but has yet to be adopted as law.

Other states and countries are said to be watching the Hawaii legislation closely, and similar laws are being considered from Malaysia to Canada. In a state where 13 percent of residents are Chinese, only about a dozen restaurants serve the soup.

The timing of the law is essential since open ocean sharks are considered to be at great risk; an effort this past spring in Qatar by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to get international protection failed in part due to effective lobbying by Japanese representatives—the same lobbyists who succeeded in keeping similarly-endangered bluefin tuna off the list.

I’ve walked into restaurants advertising shark fin recipes in Japan and China and have asked tasters to describe the delicacy. As best I can decipher it apparently has less taste than chicken consommé.

Despite some out-moded beliefs, there are no aphrodisiacal attributes to shark fins. In fact, heavy consumption may cause sterility due to mercury in the sharks. But as China’s middle-class grows, with more and more disposable income available to hundreds of millions, so does its demand for shark fins.

Source: www.takepart.com

South African fish shops are selling unlabelled or mislabelled shark products, which poses a threat to these endangered species and the unaware shoppers, according to the WWF’s Southern Africa Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI).

“We are getting more and more reports of fish shops selling products with strange sounding names like sokomoro and ocean fillet. (Some are) common or even made-up names that most consumers won’t recognise,” said John Duncan, a programme officer for the initiative.

Referring to the latest name on the market, sokomoro, which is another name for the shortfin mako shark, Duncan added, “Retailers are purposely mislabelling these species and lying about their origins because they know shark is unpopular with consumers.”

The shortfin mako is listed as “vulnerable” by the World Conservation Union. In addition to depleting the shark population, selling shark meat poses dangers to consumers with certain allergenic or religious food restrictions.

There are no regulations in South Africa to keep retailers from selling shark under different names like gummy, lemon fish and ocean fillet, a few of “thousands and thousands” of common names used to mask fish, according to Duncan. An exotic sounding name like sokomoro is just as mysterious.

“If you wanted to, you can call it peanut butter,” he said.

It is not illegal for retailers to sell shark, and concealing the identity of shark products has advantages. Selling shark under a different name gives fishers a way to catch and sell more sharks than the legal limit in a given year.

Mislabelling also attracts shoppers who normally avoid buying endangered animal products.

The anonymous meat can also make up shortages of a popular item that is similar, like swordfish. This was the justification put forward by Sidney Fishing director Sidney Moniz, whose employees at the Fish 4 Africa in Woodstock gave inconsistent answers about sokomoro yesterday.

One vendor said sokomoro was a fish from Spain and another vaguely described its origins as “from the coasts”. One manager said the shop carried, “no fish from Spain, as far as I know”.

Most shortfin mako are snagged near Japan when long-lining for tuna according to Duncan.

“I’m not sure if they knew it was from the shark family,” said Moniz, who added he was embarrassed, as he wrestled with reasons why the shop would be selling unlabelled fish. He said it was possibly done to bolster swordfish shortages or could have been a mistake because shark is difficult to distinguish off the bone.

“A big problem for me in the recent economic recession has been all these guys shipping these substitute fish,” Moniz said. “I didn’t even know it (sokomoro) was on the endangered species list. It’s not even a big portion of our business.”

Duncan said the SASSI programme was lobbying for government and NCIS standards to develop a list of acceptable trade names. For now he said a good policy for consumers is to avoid buying a product if they do not know what it is.

Article By Hunter Atkins
hunter.atkins@inl.co.za

• This article was originally published on page 8 of Cape Times on May 14, 2024