The Marshall Islands symbolically disposed of confiscated shark fins at sea yesterday in a ceremony witnessed by regional leaders attending the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
The gesture underscored the progress made towards protecting the marine predators since the Marshalls declared a 2 million square kilometer shark sanctuary in 2011, Angelo Villagomez from the US-based Pew Charitable Trusts said.
Villagomez said some commercial tuna fishermen still illegally cut the fins from sharks, even though they earned very little from the practice.
“Fishermen only receive a few dollars [per fin],” he said. “But once they are processed in China and sold in Hong Kong restaurants, the price can be as high as US$1,500 per kilo.”
The fins that were dumped off the capital, Majuro, were confiscated from a Chinese longline fishing vessel earlier this year that was fined US$125,000.
Marshall Islands law requires that confiscated fins be burned or dumped at sea, although Villagomez said since the theme of this year’s PIF was reducing climate change “we thought it was better not to burn the fins.”
The Pew group estimates more than 70 million sharks are killed annually for their fins, leaving up to a third of open-water species on the brink of extinction.
Villagomez said the fins disposed of yesterday included ones from oceanic whitetip sharks, which are “protected in every tuna fishery and is the most vulnerable species of shark.”
In the north Pacific, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Guam, the Northern Marianas and three of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia ban shark finning.
“The Pacific is leading the world in shark protection,” Villagomez said.
The PIF officially opened yesterday evening with a lavish ceremony on the shores of Majuro’s lagoon.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS