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Endangered whale shark fins were found smuggled into a shipment sent via Singapore Airlines to Hong Kong in May, activist group Sea Shepherd Global announced Wednesday.
The fins from the endangered species were hidden within legal fins in a 989 kilogram (approximately 2,180 pound) shipment that traveled from Colombo, Sri Lanka through Singapore to Hong Kong, which is one of the largest shark fin trading centers in the world, AFP reported.
Singapore Airlines, which bans the shipment of shark fins, said in an email statement Wednesday reported by Reuters that the shipment had slipped past the airline's notice because it was labeled "Dry Seafood."
"Singapore Airlines are yet another victim of these shark fin smugglers, who deceived the airline by declaring the shipment as 'dried seafood' to skirt the airline's internal booking checks," Asia director for Sea Shepherd Global Gary Stokes told AFP.
According to Reuters, Stokes discovered the endangered fins hidden in the shipment.
Singapore Airlines has since blacklisted the shipper and alerted employees to check any other shipments labeled "dry seafood."
Hong Kong allows the import of shark fins, which are served in a jelly-like soup believed to have health benefits. Most of the fins imported to Hong Kong are then sent on to mainland China, according to AFP. Fins from species on the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species are supposed to be accompanied by a special permit, Reuters reported.
Activists have succeeding in halving the number of shark fins entering Hong Kong in the past 10 years, but the trade still poses a danger to vulnerable shark species.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, more than 70 million sharks are killed each year and a quarter of species are threatened with extinction.
The latest discovery comes a little over a year after a three-month investigation by Sea Shepherd revealed that shark fins from endangered species like hammerhead and oceanic whitetip sharks were entering Hong Kong despite bans imposed by shipping lines and airline cargo companies.
Smugglers used similar tactics of mislabeling shipments as "seafood," "dried seafood" or "dried goods" to bypass bans by Maersk, Virgin and Cathay Pacific. At the time, all three companies pledged to work with Sea Shepherd to combat smuggling.
Maersk, the world's largest shipping company, also became the first to ban shark fin cargo in 2010. Cathay Pacific was the first airline to ban unsustainable shark products in 2012, and banned shark fins altogether in 2016.
Now, more than 30 airlines and nearly 20 shipping lines have implemented similar bans, Alex Hofford of WildAid said.
About 92 percent of shark fins enter Hong Kong by sea and 8 percent by plane.
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Botswana, home to one third of Africa's elephants, announced Wednesday that it was lifting its ban on the hunting of the large mammals.
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This is a victory more than a decade in the making. PETA and our international affiliates have crashed Prada's catwalks with anti-fur signs, held eye-catching demonstrations all around the world, and sent the company loads of information about the fur industry. In 2018, actor and animal rights advocate Pamela Anderson sent a letter on PETA's behalf urging Miuccia Prada to commit to leaving fur out of all future collections, and the iconic designer has finally listened.
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If people in three European countries want to fight the climate crisis, they need to chill out more.
That's the conclusion of a new study from think tank Autonomy, which found that Germany, the UK and Sweden all needed to drastically reduce their workweeks to fight climate change.
"The rapid pace of labour-saving technology brings into focus the possibility of a shorter working week for all, if deployed properly," Autonomy Director Will Stronge said, The Guardian reported. "However, while automation shows that less work is technically possible, the urgent pressures on the environment and on our available carbon budget show that reducing the working week is in fact necessary."
The report found that if the economies of Germany, Sweden and the UK maintain their current levels of carbon intensity and productivity, they would need to switch to a six, 12 and nine hour work week respectively if they wanted keep the rise in global temperatures to the below two degrees Celsius promised by the Paris agreement, The Independent reported.
The study based its conclusions on data from the UN and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on greenhouse gas emissions per industry in all three countries.
The report comes as the group Momentum called on the UK's Labour Party to endorse a four-day work week.
"We welcome this attempt by Autonomy to grapple with the very real changes society will need to make in order to live within the limits of the planet," Emma Williams of the Four Day Week campaign said in a statement reported by The Independent. "In addition to improved well-being, enhanced gender equality and increased productivity, addressing climate change is another compelling reason we should all be working less."
Supporters of the idea linked it to calls in the U.S. and Europe for a Green New Deal that would decarbonize the economy while promoting equality and well-being.
"This new paper from Autonomy is a thought experiment that should give policymakers, activists and campaigners more ballast to make the case that a Green New Deal is absolutely necessary," Common Wealth think tank Director Mat Lawrence told The Independent. "The link between working time and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions has been proved by a number of studies. Using OECD data and relating it to our carbon budget, Autonomy have taken the step to show what that link means in terms of our working weeks."
Stronge also linked his report to calls for a Green New Deal.
"Becoming a green, sustainable society will require a number of strategies – a shorter working week being just one of them," he said, according to The Guardian. "This paper and the other nascent research in the field should give us plenty of food for thought when we consider how urgent a Green New Deal is and what it should look like."
- Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change ›
- How working less could solve all our problems. Really. | ›
- Needed: A shorter work week – People's World ›
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