National Geographic. (March 3, 2020) “How the U.S. is inadvertently facilitating shark fin smuggling” Received March 3, 2020
Despite the small demand for shark fins in the United States, American cargo planes have unknowingly been transporting shark fins across the world. The shark fin trade is an extremely illegal business that threatens various different shark species that are close to extinction such as the hammerhead shark, silky shark, and thresher shark. The sharks often targeted for this trade have a very low reproduction rate; some sharks don’t even begin the reproductive process until the age of 150. Because shark meat is far less valuable than the shark fins, most shark fin hunters merely cut the fins off the sharks and release them back into the ocean until the sharks die from blood loss or are eaten by another predator. Most of the fins are directed towards East Asia making American planes the perfect transportation system allowing the goods to move quickly from various South American countries to Asia. The fins are used in several traditional asian dishes and as the hunt for shark fins became illegal globally, the shark fin trade is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The article describes the difficult situation that the shark fin trade puts the United States in as it is unintentionally providing its global transportation. There definitely needs to be stricter regulations about the shark fin trade in the South American countries that these sharks are being hunted in. While there are already very strict regulations on the shark fin trade in the United States, at times it can be very difficult for The Fish and Wildlife Services inspectors and customs to detect the shark fins in cases when the smugglers incorrectly label the illegal shipment as other goods. By allowing the shark fins to pass through the border, the United States is only perpetuating the success of the trade. Therefore it’s important that the U.S. applies its strong legal framework about the exportation of endangered species to more strictly monitor the goods passing through the border. As the shark fin trade only becomes a worse problem for endangered shark species, officials should look towards more thorough inspections of cargo that is believed to be correlated to the shark fin trade.