With their flesh and organs shaved away, the sharks that Costa Rican customs officials pulled from the fishing boat Wang Jia Men 89 in 2011 could only be described as skeletal. Caked in white freezer burn, the bloody spines had been left intact with their cartilaginous fins attached only by small strips of skin. For the fishermen aboard, of course, the fins were what mattered. By keeping the spines and fins connected, they apparently hoped to skirt a 2005 Costa Rican law against shark finning, a practice in which captured sharks are shorn of their valuable fins and dumped overboard to die. The finning law aims to curb the wholesale massacre of sharks by prohibiting the landing of shark fins unless they’re connected to the... [Log in to read more]