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Shark fins found on Maersk Line, Cathay and Virgin flights despite ban

LARGE shipments of shark fin are still arriving in Hong Kong on airlines and shipping lines that have made "No Shark Fin" carriage ban commitments, according to marine conservation group Sea Shepherd Global.

Around 92 per cent of shark fins entering Hong Kong arrive via sea freight, while the remaining eight percent arrive via air cargo, according to The Maritime Executive.

As with most environmental issues, the first challenge is to change the rules, but the second and much harder challenge is to enforce those rules, says Sea Shepherd Global. Despite recent media claims that the trade is down overall, the conservation group began its investigation after seeing evidence of large shipments of shark fins arriving in Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district.

"The months leading up to Chinese New Year are always the busiest months for the shark fin traders as they seek to fulfill the demand of the mainland Chinese market during the festive holiday" said Gary Stokes of Sea Shepherd Global.

The three-month long investigation showed large shipments arriving by carriers who have pledged to ban the transport of shark fins, including two 45-foot containers full of shark fins from the Middle East which arrived in Maersk containers. The problem that companies such as Virgin, Maersk and Cathay Pacific are now facing is that shark fin traders are abusing the system by fraudulently mis-declaring and mis-labelling shark fin under generic categories such as "seafood", "dried seafood", "dried goods" or "dried marine products" to avoid detection.

"Maersk Line is committed to enforcing our policy not to carry sharks fin products on our ships. It is frustrating that some traders seemingly mis-declare the cargo they intend to ship with us in order to try to get around the restrictions we have put in place," said Tim Smith, chairman and chief representative - North Asia Region, Maersk.

"However, we are grateful to Sea Shepherd for their investigative work to highlight this problem, and we are working with Sea Shepherd and other NGOs as well as with HK Customs and other stakeholders to tighten our procedures to ensure the ban we place on carriage of shark fin is effective in the future."

An airfreight shipment on Virgin Australia Cargo and Cathay Pacific which had been falsely declared as 'fish products' was not identified by Customs. The exporter who attempted to transport these goods has now been blacklisted by Virgin Australia Cargo, which has a ban on the transportation of shark fins.

"It's so sad what the team at Sea Shepherd has managed to discover. Thousands and thousands of sharks slaughtered just for their fins to be turned into bowls of soup. For those people who have knowingly participated they need to hang their heads in shame. For Sea Shepherd and the team led by Gary Stokes, they need to be congratulated for exposing this foul, and sometimes illegal trade," said Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group.

Presented with the evidence, Maersk, Cathay Pacific and Virgin are now working in close collaboration with Sea Shepherd Global and WildAid to close all remaining loopholes being exploited by the shark fin trade.

"Well over thirty airlines and just under twenty container shipping lines now operate No Shark Fin cargo bans. Yet some airlines, such and Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airlines, are resisting industry best practice and are still propping up the crime-ridden shark fin trade. WildAid is calling on all passenger airlines, cargo airlines, container shipping lines as well as express parcel carriers such as FedEx and TNT, to act sustainably, ethically ?and above all legally ?by ruling out dirty shark fin shipments from their cargo holds." said Alex Hofford, of WildAid.