After months of dialogue since the conservation group Oceana presented a bill to the Chilean National Congress, Chile has become a new leader in shark protection by unanimously passing a bill to ban the practice of shark finning from its national waters. The new ban affects 30 shark species that travel the eastern Pacific to the Southern Ocean along the Chilean coastline. Of the 30 species, 15 are specifically targeted for finning.
So what is finning and why is this important?
Finning is the act of slicing off the fins of a shark out at sea and then dumping the body (often still alive!) overboard. You can also check out our in depth look at this issue here.
Without fins sharks cannot swim and therefore no longer possess the ability to hunt for food, evade other predators, or even breathe. The fin is used in an Asian delicacy called shark fin soup. The fin itself provides no flavor to the soup but absorbs flavor from various broths and has a thick, stringy texture. The shark fin market has boomed with China and Hong Kong trading tens of thousands of tons every year, with other countries not falling far behind.
Finning is killing millions of sharks every year with a projected 38 million just in 2011 alone. With Chile passing the bill to ban finning from its national waters, we can hope that number will drop – now and the years to come. This bill is a small step towards saving our sharks and removing them from the Endangered Species List… but a step nonetheless.
By
Raissa Wagner
Rain Tees Contributer