Lured by the promise of a big catch (shark finning in Gulf of Mexico, US side)

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Source: Washington Post

Lured by the promise of a big catch

Where U.S.-Mexico border meets gulf’s waters, Coast Guard finds itself chasing illegal shark fishermen

By Kevin Sieff, Saturday, March 19,12:27 AM

MATAMOROS, Mexico — The chase began after darkness descended on this stretch of ocean, where the U.S.-Mexico border cuts through the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen gut sharks in Playa Bagdad, Mexico, where the fins sell for $35 a pound in the local market. Most of the fishing is done across the border in U.S. waters.

The shark fishermen turned off the lights of their skiff before sneaking north across the border, and the U.S. Coast Guard boat followed suit, leaving six officers to find the target using a single pair of night-vision goggles. “Those guys are north of the line,” said Petty Officer Andrew Watzek, squinting at the 25-foot Mexican skiff and then at a radar screen, where the border is a bold line extending off the coast. “They’re definitely in American waters.”

Both boats bob quietly, about 100 yards apart, on this cool night in January, until an officer pulls the throttle. The chase is on.
On land, a few miles west, the United States has spent billions of dollars in the past decade to secure its southern border, building 670 miles of fencing and adding more than 10,000 border patrol agents. But just off the coast of south Texas, that border is wide open, unmarked and largely unpatrolled. The men who cross it at night sometimes carry drugs and immigrants. But overwhelmingly, they’re looking for new bounty in American waters: sharks whose fins are bound mostly for China. The global trade in shark fins is worth more than a billion dollars, experts say.

Biologists estimate that Mexican fishermen annually catch more than 50,000 sharks illegally in the United States because the best shark fishing is north of the border. “They have GPS devices. They know where they are in the gulf and what they’re doing. They’re violating the sovereignty of American waters,” said Lt. Mickey Lalor, whose fleet includes about 70 officers devoted largely to rebuffing shark fishermen. snip...more



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper/A%20Section/2011-03-19/A/6/14.0.1621339396_epaper.html

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This to add to the thread about the dead female shark from the Arabian Gulf found with 45 babies when she was gutted. Instead of bombing Libya, we should be protecting our own resources.

[Angry Dragon]

1. It is all about the money

If there was no market then there would be no shark killing

[wordpix]

2. also about human overpopulation, poverty, greed...

[14thColony]

3. Now this is a Coast Guard role I can get behind

Not so keen things like Operation Protect British Petroleum, but good old resources protection and defense of sovereign waters? That's a good use of money in my estimation. Especially against people who are annihilating several species of fish so that wealthy Chinese can show how affluent they are by serving shark fin soup at their daughters' weddings.