Fishermen smuggle nearly 1,000 shark fins: US

HONOLULU: US prosecutors in Hawaii are accusing the owners and oficers of a Japanese ishing boat of helping Indonesian fishermen smuggle nearly 1,000 shark fins, worth about $58,000 on the black market.

It’s against U.S. law to remove the ins of sharks at sea. Prosecutors say the ishermen harvested ins from sharks that were still alive, then discarded their carcasses into the ocean. Fins are a pricey delicacy often used in soups

The boat’s owner, Japanese business Hamada Suisan Co. Ltd., and JF Zengyoren, a Japanese ishing cooperative that the vessel belongs to, were charged with aiding and abetting the traficking and smuggling of 962 shark ins, the U.S. attorney’s ofice in Hawaii said. The boat’s captain, ishing master

and irst engineer were also charged. Last month, 10 Indonesian fishermen who were working on the longline tunafishing vessel were arrested in Hawaii and charged with trying to smuggle nearly 1,000 shark ins from the US to Indonesia.

The 10 ishermen pleaded guilty on Friday to a lesser, misdemeanor charge of knowingly attempting to export shark ins, court records show. A judge sentenced them to the ive days they already served in jail.

They were headed home via Honolulu when airport security workers found shark ins in their luggage, according to court documents.

The fishermen harvested ins from hundreds of sharks “in some instances while the sharks were stunned but still alive, and discarded the inless carcasses into the ocean, all under the supervision

of the captain, and at the direction of the ishing master and irst engineer,” prosecutors said in a news release.

A Hamada representative in Japan said Friday that the Indonesian crew members had shark ins without the captain’s knowledge.

“Our tuna boats are for catching tuna. They are not to be used to smuggle shark ins,” said a man who answered the phone at Hamada Suisan in Kagoshima, Japan, who declined to provide his name. “This is our company’s policy.”

JF Zengyoren, which is known as Japan Fisheries Cooperatives in English, said in a statement that it declined to comment because it hadn’t received a copy of the complaint and was still inding out information.

Prosecutors say they could face ines of up to $5.5 million.