Australian Environment Minister urged to suspend shark fin exports

ABC 30 Jun 08;

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW is calling on the Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to suspend the export of shark fins from Australia.

The council has obtained data from the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, which shows Australia has exported nearly 133,000 kilograms of frozen shark fin in the past 13 months.

The council's marine conservation officer, Giselle Firme, says that means about 10,000 sharks have been killed for their fins.

"Today is the deadline for Peter Garrett to reissue an export license," she said.

"Peter Garrett is able to not reissue that export license and actually put in certain conditions that would restrict the fisheries until they have enough information to control the fishery and not do so much damage to the shark population in Australia."

Ms Firme it is an increase of about 500 per cent on previous years.

"There are states such as NSW that don't have a history of shark fishing, so there is no information about the biology of the different shark species and what size the population is," she said.

"Therefore, you're going out and killing a lot of sharks and you don't know how that's going to affect the population. That's very dangerous."