The practice of shark fining is already illegal under federal law, however the profit outweighs the cost of the fines. To stop the practice you need to kill the demand first. That's what this bill was trying to accomplish. By making the sale or purchase of shark fins arrestable, restaurants will no longer be able to sell the soup....Major cities like Houston will no longer be able to import (or maybe export) shark fins for business to sell.

Its well known that sharks and other marine life are being constantly poached of Texas waters by Mexican fisherman....weve seen this as finned sharks have washed up on PINS as well as the long liner floats on both Corpus and PINS beaches.

Imagine that the fins (which were illegally caught in our waters) are being processed in Mexico and then transported through the border check points to major cities in Texas for sale. Making this illegal would give the check point agents the tool to seize and make arrests.

Now my question is why is a senator from Horseshoe Bay which is up around Austin ( No where near the Gulf Coast) have such an opposition to the conservation law ? The only thing I can think of is political or monetary gains. It appears that a group of Charter Boat Captains up around Houston/Galveston got together and threw a big hissy fit and probably this senator seeing a opportunity for these gains vouched for them. The captains stated that this bill would be tragic to their business and their clients. Again the way I read this bill it dose not affect charter boats from legally catching and keeping sharks.... They just have to clean them at the docks when they land....what it does affect is that their clients can no longer take the fins and sell them into the market.

It dosent make any sense as to why someone would be against such a law unless there is profit for them in the practice of selling shark fins.

Yes Texas still has a very healthy shark population, for instance Scalloped Hammerheads are often caught off Bob Hall. But did you know that in 2008 the Scalloped Hammerhead was listed as globally endangered ? But as long as the demand and high profit for shark fins is there, these people will continue to poach our waters and you have senator Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay and his buddies to thank for it.