A spate of recent criminal indictments highlights how U.S. companies taking advantage of a patchwork of federal and state laws are supplying a market for fins that activists say is as reprehensible as the now-illegal trade in elephant ivory once was, reports the Associated Press. A complaint filed in Miami federal court in July accused an exporter based in the Florida Keys, Elite Sky International, of falsely labeling some 5,666 pounds of China-bound shark fins as live Florida spiny lobsters.
Every year, American wildlife inspectors seize thousands of shark fins while in transit to Asia for failing to declare the shipments. Since 2000, federal law has made it illegal to cut the fins off sharks and discard their bodies into the ocean. However, individual states have broad leeway to decide whether or not businesses can harvest fins from dead sharks at a dock or import them from overseas. The heightened scrutiny from law enforcement comes as Congress debates a near-total federal ban on shark fins.