Chinese Fishing Industry To World - No, No - We Would NEVER Fin Sharks!

[hatrack]

BEIJING - A group of wildlife experts and industry officials weighed into the increasingly acrimonious battle over shark fishing on Thursday, saying very few species were threatened with extinction as some activists charge.

Hitting back at what they said were misleading claims, they told Reuters that there was no targeted killing of sharks just for their fins -- a Chinese delicacy -- as most sharks are caught mainly for their meat. We want to tell the real picture to the world," said Charlie Lim, secretary of the Hong Kong-based Shark Fin and Marine Products Association. "We believe what is true, is true."

EDIT

"It's mischievous for advocates for shark protection to talk about endangered species of sharks due to over-fishing," added Hank Jenkins, president of Australia's Species Management Specialists. "Large environmental change is likely to be global warming or habitat destruction. They're the factors that are going to produce biological extinction, not fishing." The three -- Lim, Giam and Jenkins -- were in Beijing to attend a shark conservation meeting, also attended by groups that dispute their claims about finning and the extinction threat.

"For many of these species the data is quite conclusive. The number of sharks ending up in international trade in fins is far higher than the number that are going into trade as meat," said Sarah Fowler, co-chair of the World Conservation Union's shark specialist group. "We're seeing serial depletion. In due course we will run out of productive shark stocks," she told Reuters on Wednesday.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38906/story.htm

[eppur_se_muova]

1. secretary of the "Shark Fin and Marine Products Association" ... **SIGH** ...

and this lends credibility because ... ?