The European Commission has proposed a total ban on shark finning, to be applied to all European Union fishing vessels wherever they are operating. Foreign vessels fishing in EU waters would also be subject to the ban on the practice. The EU has had a general ban in place since 2003, but it allowed for exceptions for some countries as long as the sharks’ fins were removed on land and total fins caught did not exceed 5% of the total live weight of the sharks caught in the process. The UK stopped issuing permits for shark finning in 2009, but Spain and Portugal continue to export large quantities of fins to Asia.
To read The Guardian’s article on this issue, see here.
