The U.S. House voted 350 to 1 yesterday to ban in U.S. waters the practice known as shark finning, in which sharks are caught, their fins are cut off, and the rest of their dead or dying bodies are thrown back in the ocean. Some 60,000 Pacific sharks are killed by this method each year by Hawaiian fishing crews, and the fins are sold both abroad and the U.S. to make shark fin soup, an Asian delicacy. “As an avid sportsman, I find this practice horrific and wasteful,” said the bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.). The bill has not yet been taken up in the Senate.
