Brooklyn Seafood Seller Caught Trafficking Shark Fins

Long Quan Seafood International Trading Corp. — a wholesale seafood retailer down on Bath Avenue in Bath Beach, Brooklyn — now holds the unlucky title of first company to be successfully prosecuted under New York State’s one-year-old shark fin ban.

On June 22, Long Quan’s owners pleaded guilty to “felony commercialization of wildlife” and paid a $10,000 fine for “trafficking in shark fins,” according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

The DEC says Long Quan was caught trafficking shark fins just a few months after the July 2014 ban went into effect.

In October of 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) alerted DEC to a large shipment of dried shark fins headed from JFK Airport to a business in Brooklyn.

Working together, the USFWS and DEC police determined that the shipment included several protected species of shark fins such as hammerhead, grey sharpnose, broadfin and blacktip reef sharks.

The shipment originated in Hong Kong while the company claimed fins originated from South Africa. However, some of the shark species identified are not present in South African water.

DEC police then tracked the shipment to Long Quan and served the business with a search warrant. Inside, they discovered the illegal shark fins — along with “documents related to the illegal shark fin trafficking.”

“Not only is the practice of finning a shark inhumane,” says DEC Commissioner Marc Gerstman in a statement, ”but it negatively impacts the natural balance of the oceanic ecosystem. We will not tolerate shark fin trafficking in New York State.”

Some more harrowing shark-fin tales, from the DEC press release.

One way the fins are obtained is by the practice of shark finning, which is the process of slicing off a shark’s fin and returning the shark to open waters.

A finned shark, unable to swim or pass water across its gills, dies from suffocation or blood loss. An estimated 73 million sharks are killed each year to supply the growing global demand for their fins.

Long Quan did not return a call for comment.