"Dalian Ocean Fishing used banned gear to deliberately catch and illegally cut the fins off of huge numbers of sharks in international waters, Mongabay has found.
Just five of the company’s longline boats harvested roughly 5.1 metric tons of dried shark fin in the western Pacific Ocean in 2019. That equates to a larger estimated shark catch that what China reported for the nation’s entire longline fleet in the same time and place.
The findings are based on dozens of interviews with men who worked throughout the company’s fleet of some 35 longline boats. A previous investigation by Mongabay and its partners uncovered widespread abuse of crew across the same firm’s vessels.
Campaigners said Dalian Ocean Fishing’s newly uncovered practices were a “disaster” for shark conservation efforts."
Philip Jacobson and Basten Gokkon report for Mongabay November 1, 2022.
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