Unprecedented international effort to prevent shark finning blocked by Japan and China

Published 2024년 11월 20일

Tridge summary

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meeting ended with the failure of a proposal to ban shark finning, despite support from 80% of parties. Japan and China opposed the proposal, which aimed to require sharks to be landed with their fins attached. The meeting did pass resolutions to protect devil rays, mantas, and whale sharks, and to improve compliance with existing shark catch reporting and limits. The UK and EU successfully proposed bans on the retention of manta and devil rays, and the EU also proposed protections for basking and white sharks. The ICCAT Compliance Committee called out Mexico and Ghana for lacking data and regulations for sharks.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

Unprecedented international effort to prevent shark finning blocked by Japan & China. ICCAT meeting ends in dramatic defeat of proposal to end at-sea fin removal while other shark safeguards advance This year’s meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has over shark finning with Belize calling for a rare vote, only to be thwarted by Japan and China. ICCAT did manage to finalise protections for devil rays, mantas, and whale sharks, and took steps to improve countries’ compliance with existing requirements to report and limit shark catch. For sixteen years, the US, Belize, and Brazil have led a multilateral effort to strengthen ICCAT’s finning ban by requiring that sharks be landed with their fins naturally attached, a policy that is widely regarded as best practice for enforcement and also helpful for shark catch data collection. This year, the proposal gained a record 42 co-sponsors (roughly 80% of ICCAT Parties), but Japan and China ...

Source: Fish Focus