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Indictment for shark finning violation successful
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Posted on Jul 28 2004
A Federal Grand Jury last July 22 returned an indictment against two men who are accused of attempting to transport approximately 470 pieces of shark fins from Guam to the Philippines.
The men have been charged with violating the Shark Finning Probation Act and the Lacey Act. According to local officials Cresento Bacaling and Conchito Cagas, Jr., crew members of a Japanese fishing vessel, illegally offloaded packages containing the shark fins from their fishing vessel.
Shark fins are considered a delicacy and are sold for high prices to restaurants. NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement Special Agent Al Samuels served the warrants and made the arrests on July 16, 2004. NOAA is an agency of the US Department of Commerce.
“To my knowledge, this is the first arrest on charges stemming from the Shark Finning Prohibition Act with the Lacey Act,” states Special Agent Samuels. “Although a preliminary review of the fishing vessel’s logs indicated no sharks were caught on the entire trip an investigation of the vessel will continue.”
The Shark Finning Prohibition Act makes it illegal for a foreign vessel to offload any shark fins into a US port, unless all the shark carcasses are also offloaded with the fins. This law has drastically reduced the number of sharks finned at sea, since most fishermen will not expend freezer space to store shark carcasses. The Lacey Act makes it illegal to traffic in illegal possessed natural resources (in this case transporting or exporting fins that were off loaded illegally in the US).
Judith L. Fogarty, Special Agent in Charge, Pacific Islands Division said, “These arrests were the result of a significant ongoing investigation conducted by the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, the Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency-Maritime Interdiction Task Force, and the Guam Port Authority Police. The investigation of Shark Finning Prohibition Act violations are a priority and will continue to be so for NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement.”
