Kevin Winters, a recreation warden for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, informed The Washington Post that a lot of the fins got here from blacktip sharks, which could be discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike greater than 20 different species which are listed as threatened or endangered, the blacktip is taken into account ample, although Oceana, the conservation group, says the shark is “near threatened with extinction due to overfishing and habitat destruction.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists blacktips as “vulnerable.”
No arrests have been made in the San Antonio case, Winters mentioned. He declined to call the restaurant or point out the kind of delicacies it serves aside from “seafood.” According to Oceana, the demand for shark fins is “driven by the market for shark fin soup, a luxury item popular in some Asian cuisines.” The group estimates that the fins from 73 million sharks yearly are used in the worldwide commerce of the merchandise.
Finning, the act of reducing off a shark’s fins, is prohibited in U.S. waters, although the apply continues to be allowed elsewhere, together with China. Hunters sometimes take solely the shark’s fins earlier than dumping the physique again into the water, the place it should drown, starve or be eaten by different fish. Depending on measurement, high quality, species and the situation the place they’re bought, fins can go for tons of of {dollars} in the marketplace. Oceana estimates, for instance, that the decrease components of the caudal fin, on the prime of a shark’s tail, can fetch greater than $300 a kilogram. In Hong Kong, costs can vary from $99 to $591 per kilogram, in response to one report.
Even although finning is prohibited in the United States, the commerce in shark fins will not be, which is why 13 states, together with Texas, have banned the sale and possession of the merchandise. Because the United States doesn’t have an outright ban on the commerce in shark fins, conservationists say, the American market gives an incentive for individuals to proceed to kill sharks in the waters the place it’s authorized. One research signifies that since 1970, world shark and ray populations have decreased by greater than 70 %, largely due to overfishing.
Conservationists have been lobbying Congress to cross the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act to shut U.S. markets to the worldwide commerce in fin merchandise. “The recent San Antonio case demonstrates that while state bans are a step in the right direction, we need a national ban to remove the United States from this devastating trade once and for all,” Whitney Webber, a marketing campaign director for Oceana, mentioned in an announcement to The Post.
The San Antonio bust will not be the most important in Winters’s profession as a recreation warden. Two years in the past, he and different wardens seized 861 shark fins and different shark fin merchandise from an Asian natural/medicinal retailer in Houston. The house owners got probation, Winters mentioned, as a part of a pretrial diversion.
Winters, fellow recreation warden Kathleen Stuman and their “canine partner, Bailey,” took half in the San Antonio bust. The possession of shark fins for the aim of sale is a Class B misdemeanor in Texas, punishable with as much as 180 days in jail and/or a $2,000 high quality. Winters mentioned he was unsure whether or not the restaurant’s house owners additionally took half in unlawful finning in U.S. waters off the Gulf of Mexico.
“There’s always a potential for more shark fins to be located and a possible ring,” Winters mentioned.
Texas recreation wardens, Winters added, are actively working to cease the commerce of shark fins throughout the state — and to teach the general public on the issues with the commerce “before it’s too late.”
“This does have a tremendous effect on our ecosystem and our oceans,” Winters mentioned. “It’s definitely a huge problem that we might not see right now, but it may affect us years from now, when maybe even our kids’ kids will be talking about sharks in a book because they’re extinct. We’re trying to see if we can possibly prevent something like this from occurring.”