Kiribati, a tiny Pacific neighbor to Hawaii that has grown ties with Beijing, detained a Chinese vessel this month for illegally harvesting shark fins, its maritime police told AFP.

The practice of cutting fins off live sharks and throwing the carcasses back into the sea is banned in much of the Pacific Ocean, but persists due to demand in East and Southeast Asia.

The Chinese ship was among four vessels detained in a surveillance crackdown by 11 Pacific island nations between Aug. 3 to Aug. 14, assisted by the U.S. Coast Guard in some areas and an Australian military aircraft. Kiribati, however, operates its own patrol boat.

The vessel was licensed to travel through Kiribati's waters but was detained by the maritime police after inspectors found shark fins on board, commander Tom Redfern told AFP.

"It was escorted back to Christmas Island for further investigation," he said, referring to a large atoll belonging to Kiribati and located south of Hawaii.

Kiribati has an exclusive economic zone spanning 1.4 million square miles of ocean, and has drawn interest from Chinese state companies since switching diplomatic ties from Taiwan in 2019.

It also hosts Chinese police, a decision the United States has said risks fueling regional tensions.

"A Kiribati Police maritime boarding officer, not under a shiprider agreement, boarded and inspected it, finding that the vessel was breaching its condition of license by keeping and retaining shark fins onboard," said Redfern.

Kiribati has recently strengthened cooperation with France, with French military personnel due to arrive next month on Christmas Island to rebuild local police stations.

The practice of removing shark fins is banned across the region.

The cruelty behind the shark fin trade is well-documented. Shark finning often involves slicing fins off live sharks and discarding the mutilated animals back into the ocean, where they die from blood loss, suffocation or predation.

"Hard to detect"
Andrew Chin, a fisheries researcher at Australia's James Cook University, said finning had led to "massive declines" in shark numbers, prompting stringent controls in the Pacific.

"Because it is now illegal, if people are doing it, it is going to be hidden and really hard to detect," he said.

Research on the DNA of thousands of shark fins sold in Hong Kong markets pointed to its origins in the region.

"We have seen evidence of illegal trade from the western and eastern sides of the Pacific," Demian Chapman, who conducted the research as director of the Sharks and Rays Conservation Research Program at Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, said.

There have been other cases of Chinese vessels violating the finning ban, he told AFP.

Reduced demand in China for shark fin soup, including a ban on serving it at government functions, had contributed to a fall in the amount of fins being traded in Hong Kong, he added.

Last November, U.S. authorities assisted the Peruvian government in seizing an estimated 10,000 shark fins destined for China. The bust, at an industrial port outside of Lima, led to the arrest of three men tied to a transnational criminal network involved in illegal fishing and wildlife smuggling, officials said.

In 2020, wildlife inspectors at a port in Miami discovered 1,400 pounds of dried shark fins.

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