Crew members of the Chinese-flagged ship confiscated by the Ecuadorean Navy arrive in court in San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands on August 25, 2017. Photo: AFP
Earlier this month, a Chinese cargo vessel was caught near the Galápagos Islands. The Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, crewed by twenty men, had nearly 300 tons of nearly-extinct or endangered species. Hammerhead sharks were among the 6,600 sharks aboard.
Of course, any fishing around the Galápagos Islands is strictly prohibited–it is, after all, the inspiration for Darwin’s theory of evolution and home to a vast number of species found nowhere else on earth. Its value to researchers is incalculable. Since the Galápagos Marine Reserve is virtually untouched by the dirty hands of man, it is how nature was meant to be: balanced and pristine. But damn it, someone always finds a way to try and fuck things up.
There are a variety of factors that make the islands an ideal place for rich biodiversity–they’re relatively isolated, located nearly 700 miles from Ecuador, and the mixture of warm and cooler ocean currents that swirl around them makes them a perfect place for somewhere around 3,000 species of fish, including more than 30 species of sharks. According to Reuters, the newly formed 15,000-square-mile marine sanctuary protects the “world’s greatest concentration of sharks.” As any researcher will tell you, sharks are an essential part of the marine ecosystem, but the temptation all those sharks pose for shark fin hunters has proven a difficult sin to resist.
In a courtroom in San Cristobal, Galápagos Islands on August 25, Ecuadorean officials–the Galápagos Islands are a province of Ecuador–sentenced the crew to up to four years in prison for poaching. They’ve also been fined US$5.9 million, a hefty chunk of change that will likely never be paid.
The issue, however, is much more complicated than simply catching a few poachers. As long as the demand for shark fins exists, there will be people willing to risk prison to supply them. The demand for shark fin soup has been around since China’s Song Dynasty–from 960 to 1279, a time that saw the invention of gunpowder and the first real calculation of true north–and although perceptions are changing, they’re not changing all that quickly.
Officially, China opposes any type of poaching. “We’ve said many times that the Chinese government opposes all forms of illegal fishing,” Hua Chunying, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson said during a news briefing that took place after the trial ended. “On the issue of protecting endangered wildlife, the Chinese government adopts a zero-tolerance attitude towards illegal trading in endangered wildlife and the products derived from them. The Chinese government always instructs its fishing businesses to operate in accordance with laws and regulations and protect the marine eco-environment.”
