 A bill to ban possession or sale of shark fins are on the agenda for the New Jersey Assembly’s Environment and Solid Waste Committee on Thursday January, 19. The American Littoral Society continues to support passage of bill A3945 (and its counterpart in the state Senate, S2044) because eliminating the market for shark fins is crucial to shark protection. Approximately 100 million sharks are killed globally each year, and one of the major incentives for this is the shark fin trade. Bill sponsors are Assemblymen Reed Gusciora, Herb Conaway Jr., and Nicholas Chiaravalloti. Shark fins are often taken through a practice known as shark finning, which involves cutting the fins off of sharks and then throwing the sharks back into the ocean, often while still alive. The number of sharks taken through fishing and finning are having a catastrophic effect on shark populations and a number of species are in danger of extinction.
The bills being considered by the New Jersey's legislature establish a ban on possession, sale, trade and distribution of shark fins. New Jersey must not be complicit in the practice of shark finning, which has led to the extinction of shark populations around the world and wreaks havoc on our entire oceanic ecosystem. California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, American Samoa, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands have enacted similar laws in recent years. Read this for more about the ecological impacts of shark finning: http://ow.ly/hsE43089uui Comments are closed.
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