watched this on Catalyst last Thursday night regarding shark 'finning' and its impact.  The video is 6 minutes long and the transcript below is from the video.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3185178.htm

TRANSCRIPT

Narration:  Something very disturbing is happening in our oceans...the world's sharks are under threat..and it's all because of their big, beautiful fins.

Dr Vic Peddemors:  Sharks are quite unique in the fish world because they are long lived but they are slow growing and age very slowly to sexual maturity.  These are the issues that make it very susceptible for them to be overfished.

Narration:  Since the early 1990s we've been removing more than 700 million kilograms of shark from the world's oceans every year.

Dr Vic Peddemors:  It's an awful, massive number of fish.  And the large percentage of that would be primarily for the fin.

Ruben Meerman:  Shark fin is a delicacy in East Asia where it's used for consumption mainly in shark fin shoup.

Narration:  But here's the really shocking part:  shark fins are pure cartilage, so they have no flavour and virtually no nutritional value.

Dr Vic Peddemors:   Historically only the wealthy could afford to have shark fin.  That's obviously now changed with the burgeoning middle classes in china and the ability to now afford shark fin has actually driven a lot of this increase that we've seen.

Ruben Meerman:  The main market for shark fins is Hong Kong but it's also widely available here in restaurants and on the shelf.

Narration:  And it's the astronomical price tag that's driving this frenzy.

Ruben Meerman:  I've just bought some shark fins.  This packet of little ones, $4.20, this large single fin $118 and I was assured, it's a product of Australia but there were even bigger ones in the shop that were $400 a kilo.  So the message is clear; the bigger the fin the higher the price and that's a recipe for disaster. 

Dr Vic Peddemors:  Sharks are critical in the marine ecosystem as the apex marine predator.  So removing sharks actually has a massive domino knock-on effect on the whole ecosystem.

Narration:  The very high prices that fins fetch can lead to the practice called "finning".  At its most extreme, the fins are cut off while the shark is still alive.  It's then dumped overboard...and left to drown.  But the less cruel method of killing the shark first, then removing the fins and discarding the carcass is still horrendously wasteful.

Ruben Meerman:  Taking the fins and not the carcass is illegal in Australia but it does happen.  It's up to the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and state bodies like NSW Fisheries to stop this activity.

Narration:  Tony Chen is a fisheries officer who works for both organisations.

Ruben Meerman:  So what's your direct experience with illegal shark fishing?

Tony Chen:  Well, I had one matter where we seized 87 fins from a tuna long lining vessel.  It had been fishing for a couple of days between Sydney and the south coast of NSW and we found the fins concealed in a bait freezer on board.

Narration:  Tony's search of the boat revealed only the shark fins, not the bodies.

Tony Chen:  Shark fins are worth a lot of money, and the actual bodies of the shark, the meat, is very low value and it's just not worth their while to retain the body when you can easily take the valuable part of the shark off.  We took the 87 shark fins to the Australian Museum for DNA analysis.

Narration:  Hidden behind the prehistoric dinosaur skeletons there's a state of the art DNA laboratory run by Dr Rebecca Johnson.

Dr Rebecca Johnson:  DNA was really important in this case because once the fins have been removed from the body, to make an identification on morphology, the external characters, is very difficult with shark fins.

Narration:  Since the fins were found without the carcasses, in order to prosecute the case the AFMA needed to prove that the fins did indeed come from sharks.

Dr Rebecca Johnson:  Once I got the DNA sequences from the specimens, I went looking for the closest match from a known reference sample. And this is where our fish collection is invaluable. It's, it's kind of analogous to matching fingerprints and we were able to find specimens and take DNA from them, and then make a definitive identification using our known fish collection. In the 87 shark fins case we found they actually were equivalent to coming from 22 individuals. They included spinner shark, dusky whaler, tiger shark, short fin mako and blue shark. It's very important to establish if you're dealing with a protected species or not. So the DNA evidence can not only be used to establish that it's a shark, it then may be able to establish that it's from a protected species and this obviously can draw much higher fines and penalties.

Tony Chen:  The outcome was that there was two people convicted, ah they were both first-time offenders, and they got a total then of $23,000 in fines. Ah, it was a really excellent result

Narration:  It's good to know that the laws protecting sharks are being enforced. But is this enough?

Dr Vic Peddemors:  It's all very well trying to stop the end where it's the fishers but if we don't stop the users from using the product, we're probably not going to be very successful.