Shark Words

With co-authors Dr. Brian W. Darvell and Professor Gilles Cuny, I recently published a paper in Marine Policy: Response to “A United States shark fin ban would undermine sustainable shark fisheries” D.S. Shiffman & R.E. Hueter, Marine Policy 85 (2017) 138–140 It showed that the authors had used incorrect figures in order to promote shark fishing in the USA in their paper and had also minimized the shark fin trade and the dangers of eliminating the oceans' top predators. The same authors reacted by publishing another paper which essentially said the same thing, except that it claimed to be a rebuttal of our paper, and made several incorrect statements about it — their paper was essentially a thinly veiled personal attack. Similarly, we became aware that those authors, who appear to be incapable of making any kind of intellectual argument, have been personally attacking us openly elsewhere on the Internet. So with my co-authors, I wrote a Letter to the Editor to make su...

"The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act" is considered to be vital in the fight against shark finning. Yet shark fisheries lobbyists David Shiffman and Robert Hueter are doing their best to block it. They have published a paper opposing the legislation, which has been echoed by the press in ways suggesting that banning the shark fin trade in the United States could be "bad for sharks." But their short and vacuous paper gives only three reasons to support their position and concerns itself with the well-being of shark fisheries, not sharks.    Firstly, they state that passage of the Act will "undermine decades of progress made towards ensuring sustainable shark fisheries in the United States and around the world." But in the absence of any evidence or reasoning in support this allegation, it remains nothing more than an opinion. The statement is neither scientific nor relevant to the real issue. The second reason given is that the legis...