In the late 1990s, Costa Rican marine biologist and environmentalist Randall Arauz was studying the impact of commercial fishing on sea turtles when he made an alarming discovery: longline fishermen, who accidentally trap sea turtles, were targeting sharks, hacking off their valuable fins and throwing the animals back in the water, where they would bleed to death. Shark fins fetch hundreds of dollars apiece in Asia, where shark-fin soup is highly prized and consuming the fins is thought to improve sexual drive. In 1997, Arauz founded Pretoma, a green group in Costa Rica that led a successful decade-long campaign to outlaw shark finning in national waters. Under legislation passed in 2005, fishermen must bring sharks to shore with their fins attached. This dramatically reduces the number of sharks they can kill on each voyage. Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador and Panama followed suit. In April, Arauz was awarded the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize. He spoke recently with EcoAméricas correspondent Leslie Josephs in San José. [Log in to read more]

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