Australia Live shark finning, the practice of cutting the fins from live sharks and dumping the body, is illegal in all jurisdictions in Australia. Australia still participates in the shark fin trade. 'Fins Naturally Attached' (FNA) is the policy employed to reduce and regulate live shark finning in Australia fisheries. But not all states in Australia have adopted this policy. In
Queensland and
Western Australia, there is no 'fins naturally attached' policy, meaning that illegal live finning and dumping of sharks could still be occurring. Recently, the NT (Northern Territory) Government implemented reforms to its shark fishery that impose stricter regulation by enforcing a 'Fins Naturally Attached' policy, in line with international and national best practise. FNA means that sharks must be brought back to land with the fins attached to the shark body, which has been shown to greatly reduce illegal targeting, dumping of unwanted sharks at sea, and prevent live shark finning. Shark finning is not allowed in any
tuna or
billfish longline fishery, or in any Commonwealth fishery taking sharks. Fins must be landed attached, and additional regulations apply in some states or territories. In
New South Wales, sharks taken, or any relevant portion of a shark taken, may not be on board any vessel at any time (including after landing) without fins naturally attached.
Imported products In Australia, the
export and import of wildlife and wildlife products is regulated under Part 13A of the federal
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), which is administered by the
Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Regulation applies equally to individuals, commercial organizations and not-for-profit organizations.
CITES Appendix II shark specimens cannot be legally imported into Australia for personal or commercial purposes unless: • The specimen is accompanied by a valid Australian CITES import permit (Australian import permits can be granted only if an overseas CITES export permit has been granted); or • The specimen is accompanied by a valid certificate issued by the overseas CITES management authority confirming that the specimen was obtained before the species was listed on CITES (pre-CITES certificate); or • The specimen is accompanied by an overseas CITES export permit or equivalent, is part of personal accompanied baggage and is intended for personal use and not for trade or sale. No permits are required for the import of specimens obtained from shark species other than those listed above. To avoid seizure, all products must be clearly labeled or have documentation certifying the species of origin.
Canada Shark finning has been illegal in Canada since 1994. As of 2019, Canada passed a law that bans the import and export of shark fins, being the first country to impose a national ban. In late 2011, the city of
Brantford, Ontario became the first city in Canada to pass new
bylaws to ban the possession, sale, or consumption of shark fin products. In that medium-sized city in which no restaurants which serve shark fin exist, there was no opposition to the ban, which was largely symbolic. Nevertheless, a handful of cities soon followed, including
Toronto, Calgary,
Mississauga, and several others in
Southern Ontario: •
Brantford, Ontario 11 to 0 vote •
Oakville, Ontario 7 to 0 vote •
Mississauga, Ontario 11 to 0 vote (later repealed by Council on 8 May 2013) •
Toronto 38 to 4 vote (later overturned by court on 30 November 2012) •
Calgary 13 to 2 vote
Markham and
Richmond Hill opted not to bring forth the motion, suggesting that this issue is a federal matter. Chinese restaurants and businesses selling shark fin opposed the ban, and in late 2011, suggested that they will challenge the by-laws before the courts once fines are imposed. When Toronto imposed steep fines, they did just that. In late 2012, the
Ontario Superior Court overturned Toronto's shark fin ban, ruling that the law as written was outside the powers of the city to impose without a "legitimate local purpose," and was therefore of "no force and effect." The judge accepted that the practice of shark finning was inhumane, but he did not agree with Toronto's justification of local purpose —– namely, that the consumption of shark fins may have an "adverse impact" on the health and safety of its residents and on the environmental well-being of the city. Toronto has served legal notice that it plans to appeal the court ruling. On 1 December 2012, Ontario Superior Court Judge James Spence ruled that Toronto's ban was not valid. Members of Toronto's Chinese business community had also challenged that ban. Judge Spence said that the city does not have the power to enforce the ban. In September 2012,
Toronto's mayor
Rob Ford believed that the ban was not the city's responsibility, and so he did not support it at that time. On 27 March 2013 a private members bill to ban shark fin imports into Canada failed in the
House of Commons. Shark finning was already illegal in Canadian waters, but there was no law to stop importing into Canada. It was restarted by Conservative Senate member
Michael L. MacDonald in Bill S-238 which was passed by the Senate on 23 October 2018. That bill will now go to the House of Commons for further debate.
Calgary's city council decided to wait until December 2013 to recommended leaning away from a total ban and look for ethical sources of shark products. Alderman John Mar said there would be more time to discuss, engage, and look for other options. The new wording in the bylaw was meant to ban the sale, distribution, and trade of shark fins, but not ban the possession and consumption. Canada's city of
Vancouver's Councillor
Kerry Jang said at Calgary's council meeting that it was not a "cultural thing," and that even China and the Chinese government decided to phase out all shark fins from state banquets. He also mentioned that the wordings of the bylaws in Calgary and Toronto, which face legal problems with municipal jurisdiction, are trying to ban possession and consumption, but that is hard to enforce and regulate. On 27 May 2013, against the wishes of the Shark Fin Free Calgary organization,
Calgary City Council overturned the ban. There were protests against the ban from Calgary's Chinese community, and
Calgary's city task force recommended against the ban. According to the article in The
Calgary Herald, Calgary's Mayor
Naheed Nenshi never wanted a full ban, even though he had voted for the ban the previous year.
China NBA All-Star Chinese basketball player
Yao Ming pledged to stop eating shark fin soup at a news conference on 2 August 2006. American basketball player
Tracy McGrady, a teammate of Yao's, reportedly stated that he was impressed by the soup when he tried it for the first time, but was criticized by the Hong Kong branch of the
World Wide Fund for Nature for his remark. Opinions suggest that government corruption and official banquets contribute to the consumption of shark fins. A ban on shark fin from government banquets was announced in July 2012 and went into effect in 2013. Protesters have targeted various brands with anti-shark fin demonstrations. After being targeted in a May 2016 protest at
Hong Kong International Airport,
Cathay Pacific in June 2016 announced they would stop shipping shark fin.
Hong Kong Disneyland removed shark fin soup from its wedding banquet menu after international pressure from environmental groups, who threatened to boycott its parks worldwide despite the high demand for the delicacy.
The Peninsula Hotel banned shark fin in 2012. In April 2018, shark fin protesters gatecrashed the opening of
Shake Shack at the IFC in
Hong Kong. This was due to Shake Shack partnering with
Maxim's Caterers being Shake Shack's Hong Kong licensee. Brand premises directly owned by Maxim's have been targeted in numerous protests. On 15 June 2018, protesters directly targeted Maxim's headquarters in a demonstration that also highlighted Maxim's being a regional licensee for
Starbucks.
Taiwan Taiwan banned shark finning in 2011. But, the legislation are mainly targeting fishing vessels, while resellers and restaurants are not properly regulated. It is reported that, at least until 2021, shark finning is pretty common at sea and hard to ban totally. Some medical stores even, allegedly, put fins from CITES-identified species at sale publicly . In 2020, the
Fisheries Agency deprecated the fin to body mass ratio-based regulations and enforce more restrictive regulations, requiring that fins are either naturally attached or tied to bodies, or (for small fishing boats only) fins and bodies are in the same bags or tagged with the same label. The Environment Justice Foundation comments that the new regulation would facilitate port inspections and law enforcement, helping reduce illegal sharking finning.
Malaysia Malaysia was one of the top 10 importers and exporters of shark fins in the world between 2000 and 2009. In 2012, the
Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister proposed an amendment to the Fisheries Act that would give force to set up a shark sanctuary zone in
Semporna and other shark populated areas in Sabah. This ban was put on hold pending the Federal Government's decision on the issue. In 2015, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister,
Ahmad Shabery Cheek, said that the ban of shark finning is "unnecessary" as the finning industry does not exist in Malaysia. He went on further to say that "sharks are normally caught by accident when they enter the fishnets along with the other fishes."
New Zealand The great white sharks have been given full protection in the territorial waters of New Zealand but shark finning is legal on other shark species if the shark is dead. The
Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand are campaigning to raise awareness of shark finning and a number of
foodies have fronted the campaign. Since 1 October 2014, it has been illegal in New Zealand for a commercial fisher to remove the fins from any shark and discard the body at sea. There are specific requirements for certain species.
Palau In 2009, the
Republic of Palau created the world's first
shark sanctuary. It is illegal to catch sharks within Palau's
EEZ, which covers an area of . This is an area about the size of France. President
Johnson Toribiong also called for a ban on global shark finning, stating: "These creatures are being slaughtered and are perhaps at the brink of extinction unless we take positive action to protect them."
Singapore Leading
Singapore-based supermarket chain,
Cold Storage, has joined the
World Wide Fund for Nature Singapore
Sustainable seafood Group and agreed to stop selling all shark fin and shark products in its 42 outlets across the country. The supermarket is a subsidiary of
Dairy Farm, a leading pan-Asian food retailer that operates more than 5,300 outlets and employs some 80,000 people in the Asia-Pacific region. It is the first supermarket in Singapore to implement a no shark fins policy. The largest supermarket chain in Singapore,
NTUC FairPrice and
hypermarket Carrefour will also be banning all shark fin products from its outlets before April 2012.
United States National Bill Clinton signed the
Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000 (SFPA), which banned finning on any fishing vessel within United States territorial waters and on all U.S.-flagged fishing vessels in international waters. Additionally, shark fins could not be imported into the United States without the associated carcass. In 2002, in an apparent early success in stopping the shark fin trade, the United States intercepted and seized the
King Diamond II, a U.S.-flagged, Hong Kong-based vessel bound for Guatemala. The vessel was carrying of baled shark fins – representing the fins of an estimated 30,000 sharks – making it the largest quantity of shark fins ever seized. This seizure was reversed in court six years later: in
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins, the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the SFPA did not cover the seized fins in this case. Judge
Stephen Reinhardt found that the
King Diamond II did not meet the statute's definition of a fishing vessel, since it had merely bought the fins at sea and had not aided or assisted the vessels that had caught the sharks. As a result, in January 2011, President
Barack Obama signed the
Shark Conservation Act into law to close the loopholes. Specifically, the new law prohibits any boat to carry shark fins without the corresponding number and weight of carcasses, and all sharks must be brought to port with their fins attached. This Act has created a new market for shark products. Because fisherman are carrying the full shark bodies to land by boat, they need to find something to do with the leftovers. So now they are not only selling shark fins, they sell the shark meat and shark oil. When this is sold, it creates a new demand. Now fisherman have another motivator to fish & hunt for sharks. According to a Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper titled "State of the Global Market for Shark Products, "...a combination of demand growth and anti finning regulations intended to encourage the full utilization of carcasses has seen the market for shark meat expand considerably." Additional legislation has been proposed to ban the sale of shark fins in the United States as well. Current national bans prohibit shark finning in US waters but do not ban the sale or purchase of shark fins that were harvested elsewhere. To combat this, the "Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act" was introduced in
Congress. The bill was included in the
National Defense Authorization Act which was signed into law in December 2022, and fully banned the shark fin trade in the United States. The bill bans the selling, buying, and transport of shark fins across the US with a fine of up to $100,000 for each offense. Exceptions are allowed if the fin was taken lawfully by license or under other certain circumstances. There is also an exception to allow
dogfish fins, although the bill has the
Secretary of Commerce reviewing this exception by 2027 to recommend if it should continue or be terminated.
State The
Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act, passed in 2022, banned the shark fin trade throughout the United States but before it was passed several states passed their own measures to ban the shark fin trade with their boundaries. Before the national ban had passed 14 states and 3 territories passed their own versions of the bill. In 2010,
Hawaii became the first state to ban the possession, sale, and distribution of shark fins. The law became effective on 1 July 2011. Similar laws have been enacted in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, the territory of Guam, and the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. California governor
Jerry Brown cited the cruelty of finning and potential threats to the environment and commercial fishing in signing the
bill. In April 2013, Maryland became the first state on the
East Coast to enact a law against shark finning or the import of fins. Texas, Illinois, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts have also enacted bans, totaling 11 states. In June 2017, a bill was passed in Nevada that banned the sale or possession of body parts from sharks and several other
endangered species, and outlawed shark fin soup which was becoming increasingly consumed in Nevada by visitors at casinos which made it a hub for the shark fin trade in the US. In January 2020, New Jersey passed a bill banning shark fins becoming the 13th state to do so. Money generated from violations of the ban would be used to fund wildlife conservation in the state. In 2020, Florida passed the "
Kristin Jacobs Ocean Conservation Act" which banned the shark fin trade throughout the state. Despite the state bans many restaurants are still selling shark fins due to a lack on enforcement. A list of restaurants in the United States selling shark fin soup is maintained by the
Animal Welfare Institute. The national ban, that went into effect in 2022, may help to better enforce the code.
United Nations In recent decades, high demands and numerous forces of economic globalization have come together to create a true global mart. There has been a combination of growth and anti-finning regulations that has led fishers to view sharks as
commercial species. This has unintentionally caused commercial species to be targeted rather than targeting more valuable species like
tuna and
swordfish. The emergence of a new market for shark fins, with addition to stricter regulations, has created a greater incentive for the full utilization of the shark. Now, this is an important aspect to consider, as where anti-finning and environmental groups can be successful in terms of decreasing the consumption and the practice of shark finning. ==See also==