Police in Panama have seized more than six tons of shark fins, which sell for exorbitant prices in East Asia to make soups adorned with virtues by traditional Chinese medicine, authorities announced on Thursday.
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Five people were arrested during an operation dubbed “Shark” (shark, in English). The 6.79 tons of shark fins were stored in a 12-meter-long container in a locality about sixty kilometers west of the capital, Panamanian police said in a statement.
Shark fins can be sold for up to $1,000 per kilo in the Asian market, the center of which is in Hong Kong. Shark fin soup would delay aging, restore appetite, improve memory and have aphrodisiac properties, according to popular beliefs.
The conference on international trade in endangered species, which met in November in Panama, took the decision, described as “historic”, to extend its protection to around fifty species of sharks threatened by this traffic.
Requiem sharks and hammerhead sharks are the victims of more than half of the global shark fin trade worth more than $500 million a year.
A third of shark populations are threatened with extinction. The exploitation of their fins is considered one of the main threats to these species, which play an essential role in the balance of marine ecosystems.
The European Commission announced at the beginning of July that it would study the possibility of banning the trade in shark fins detached from the body of the animal, in response to a petition which has collected more than a million signatures in the Union. European (EU).
The European Union remains one of the most important exporters of shark fins, exporting “on average” 2300 tonnes of frozen shark fins per year, for a turnover of 170 million euros, i.e. almost a third of the world total, according to the Commission.