International trade for valuable shark fins has driven fishermen to catch approximately 73 million sharks per year - and now threatens many shark species with extinction. Too often, fishermen slice off the valuable shark fins and discard the bodies at sea in an unnecessary and wasteful practice called shark finning. Without the fins attached to the sharks, it is extremely difficult to determine whether sharks are being caught legally.
Unfortunately, removing shark fins at sea continues to be a problem in North Carolina and nationally because of several loopholes in existing U.S. fisheries laws. One shark species, smooth dogfish, continues to be caught in the waters off of North Carolina, and gaps in the existing laws allow the shark fins to be sliced off at sea. We need your help to end this needless and wasteful practice.
Introduced by Senator John Kerry (D-MA), the Shark Conservation Act would ban removal of shark fins at sea, close other loopholes in the current U.S. shark finning law and promote the conservation of sharks internationally.
We need a strong statement from North Carolina that shark finning is unacceptable, the current law needs improvement, and conservation of sharks must be a national conservation priority.
Please tell Senator Burr and Senator Hagan to support the Shark Conservation Act (S. 850) and to reject any proposals that allow shark finning.
Dear Senator Burr and Senator Hagan,
The Shark Conservation Act (S. 850) will be most effective if it can protect all sharks from being finned at sea. Please support the strong conservation measures of the Shark Conservation Act when it is considered in the Senate, and reject any proposals that allow shark finning to continue in U.S. waters.
Sharks are in trouble: More than half of highly migratory sharks are overexploited or depleted, and up to 73 million sharks are killed each year to support the shark fin trade -- mostly used for Asian delicacy, shark fin soup. The United States should lead the world in shark conservation by passing laws that prohibit shark finning, the removal of fins at sea and discard of the rest of the shark overboard.
In addition to provisions to prohibit shark finning at sea, the Shark Conservation Act (S.850) would also close other loopholes in the existing U.S. shark conservation laws and would encourage other nations to pass similar measures. North Carolina, and the United States more broadly, has the opportunity to be a global leader in shark conservation and must take action now to conserve sharks before populations decline to dangerously low levels.
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I urge you to support S.850, the Shark Conservation Act.
