Decision Reversed On Shark Finning

March 18, 2008

Release from: Greg Moran
Union-Tribune (San Francisco)

A Hong Kong shipping company should not have been forced to give up the proceeds from 32 tons of shark fins seized by the U.S. Coast Guard on the open seas in 2002, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco undercuts what was billed at the time as the biggest case against the practice of shark finning, which is banned under U.S. law.

It also means the government would have to return $618,956 – the market value of the 64,695 pounds of fins seized aboard the vessel King Diamond II in August 2002. The boat was taken to San Diego.

Shark fins are a highly sought commodity in many Asian cuisines. The fins provide a gelatinous texture to shark fin soup that can sell for $100 a bowl in some countries.

Animal activists and other critics abhor the practice of shark finning, calling it barbaric. Live sharks are caught and have their fins cut off and then are dumped into the ocean, where they sink and die.

The appellate court ruled that the seizure and subsequent forfeiture of the money was wrong, because the boat was not a “fishing vessel” as defined by federal law.

The King Diamond II was chartered out of Honolulu by the Hong Kong company and sailed into international waters in June 2002. It met with about 20 fishing vessels there and purchased the shark fins.

In August, the Coast Guard boarded the boat. Under the anti-shark finning law passed by Congress in 2000, fishing boats with shark fins – but no carcasses – are presumed to have broken the law.

Federal prosecutors then filed a civil complaint seeking forfeiture of the fins. The government eventually agreed to let the company have the fins after it posted a bond for their value.

In June 2005, U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz ruled in San Diego for the government, concluding the ship was a fishing vessel under the law because it aided and assisted foreign fishing boats.

Bryan Y.Y. Ho, the lawyer for the shipping company, had argued that under the language of the federal law, the boat did not qualify as a fishing vessel because it did not do any actual fishing, nor help any boats that were fishing.

Yesterday, appeals court Judge Stephen Reinhardt agreed with Ho. Reinhardt wrote that buying the shark fins did not aid the other boats in their fishing efforts and that “the mere act of purchasing does not constitute an act of aiding and assisting a seller.”

A lawyer for the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego said the decision still was being reviewed and the government was weighing its next step.