Melanie Beckemeyer reports 2011 Pacific Coast Shark News

On February 14, 2011 California Assembly Members Paul Fong and Jared Huffman introduced a bill in the California State Assembly to prohibit the sale of shark fins in California.

California is one of the largest sources of demand for shark fin outside Asia and this bill would represent a major step towards reducing pressure on shark populations. Furthermore the bill complements the ban introduced in both Hawaii and the Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands as well as restrictions established by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

Every year fins from 70 – 100 million sharks are used for shark fin soup, which is contributing to the decimation of shark populations worldwide so that now one third of all shark species are threatened with extinction. As sharks play a vital role in the oceans, their depletion could cause irreparable damage to marine ecosystems.

Shark fin soup is widely available from Chinese restaurants in the U.S. A survey found one third of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco serving the dish priced from $6.95 to $85 a bowl. Fins used for shark fin soup are often removed from a living shark with the bodies of the animal dumped overboard alive. Given the high price that shark fin soup commands, shark poaching is widespread in marine protected areas, such as the Galapagos and Cocos Islands. There have been seizures of up to 10,000 fins at a time and most recently sniffer dogs uncovered an illegal cache of fins in the Galapagos.

In a recent study the world's top shark scientists reported that of 64 species of pelagic open ocean sharks and rays, 32% are “threatened with extinction,” primarily due to overfishing. In addition, 24% were “near threatened,” while another 25% could not be assessed due to lack of data. Sharks are highly vulnerable to overfishing due to their late maturity and slow reproduction. Globally shark catches are unregulated or unsustainable and the shark fin trade is unregulated worldwide.

In China, there is a growing groundswell of opposition to shark finning. Chinese business leaders joined the pledge and Alibaba now prohibits the sale of shark fin through their site.

Sharks have been around for nearly 400 million years, but at the current rate of overfishing they could be wiped out in a single human generation.

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