The reasoning is once again tortured. The Japanese are suggesting the ban on hunting hammerhead sharks will hurt poor countries, as if that's somehow the issue. I've personally witnessed a number of great projects that are funded by the Japanese throughout southeast Asia and no doubt, they deserve credit for those investments. (A lot of that has to do with Japan's own negative history in the region last century.) But to suggest the destruction of the hammerhead shark population is about jobs is senseless. The faster they wipe out the population, the faster those same people will have no jobs because the massive fishing fleets will have eliminated everything that moves in the sea. The factory fishing fleets always over fish. Always.
So tell me again why the Obama administration is caving in to Japan on whale hunting when they are so environmentally destructive?
A U.S.-backed proposal to protect the heavily fished hammerhead sharks was narrowly rejected Tuesday over concerns by Asia nations that regulating the booming trade in shark fins could hurt poor nations.
Tom Strickland, the U.S. Assistant Interior Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said regional fisheries bodies have done nothing to regulate the trade in endangered scalloped hammerhead, great hammerhead as well as the threatened smooth hammerhead, and their numbers have dropped by as much as 85 percent.
"The greatest threat to the hammerhead is from harvest for the international fin trade and the fin of the species is among highly valued of the trade," Strickland said. Shark fin soup is a much prized delicacy in China.
