The California Legislature this week gave final approval to A.B. 376 to ban the trade in shark fins, and sent the bill to Gov. Jerry Brown. The state Senate passed the bill with a bipartisan vote of 25-9 (with 15 Democrats and 10 Republicans supporting the measure) and the Assembly had previously approved it by a vote of 65-8 (with the support of 47 Democrats and 18 Republicans). The lopsided votes mask that the fight in the Legislature was fierce, especially in the upper chamber where Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, led opposition to the bill and falsely invoked race in the debate. The bill originated in the Assembly, and was introduced by Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, himself a Chinese American.
It has been a top priority of The Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, and Humane Society International to crack down on the cruel and wasteful practice of shark finning—cutting the fins off a shark and tossing the mutilated live animal back into the ocean to die a painful death of suffocation or blood loss—just to provide the main ingredient in a bowl of shark fin soup. We are grateful to Assemblymen Fong and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, for their leadership, and Sens. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, Fran Pavley, D-Santa Monica, Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Tony Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks, for driving the issue forward in the Senate.
Live in California? Call Gov. Jerry Brown at (916) 445-2841 and urge him to sign A.B. 376 into law to ban the trade in shark fins. Then, click here to automatically send a follow-up email to the governor reiterating your support for this bill.
If signed into law by the governor, California will become the sixth U.S. state or territory to ban the sale of shark fin products, following laws passed since 2010 in Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. It would be perhaps the most significant of the laws so far, not only because it would mean the Pacific coast of the U.S. (other than Alaska) would have a policy banning the shark fin trade, but because California is the single largest market for shark fins outside of Asia. As Sen. Kehoe told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “It’s our market here that drives the slaughter,” noting that 85 percent of dried shark fins imported to the U.S. move through California ports.
The U.S. Congress last year passed the Shark Conservation Act to strengthen federal enforcement against shark finning at sea and it was signed into law by President Obama this January. Shark finning had been illegal in U.S. waters since 2000, but major loopholes in the law rendered the ban unenforceable. For example, ships were allowed to transport fins obtained illegally as long as the sharks were not finned aboard that particular vessel. The new federal law—led by Reps. Madeleine Bordallo, D-Guam, Eni Faleomavaega, D-American Samoa, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.—requires that sharks be landed with their fins still naturally attached. It makes the ban enforceable, and strengthens the U.S. hand in international negotiations when we are calling on other nations to protect dramatically declining shark populations.
But even with strengthened enforcement at sea, we need to dry up the demand for shark fins that leads to the killing of up to 73 million sharks per year. Today, one-fifth of shark species are threatened with extinction, and some populations have declined 90 percent in the last 30 years. Sharks are apex predators who play an essential role in marine ecosystems. The cruel and ecologically devastating practice of shark finning endangers their survival—and that of the species that rely on them.
As states ban the sale of this product, and consumers and chefs choose alternatives in restaurants and banquet halls, we can reduce the demand for this cruel and wasteful killing and turn the problem around for sharks. We can’t allow the continued mass slaughter of these important ocean predators just for a bowl of soup.
