Panama City Laboratory

"The practice of finning, defined as the removal of the fin or fins from a shark and discarding the remainder of the shark at sea, was first addressed in the United States of America (U.S.) in 1993. The 1993 Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Sharks of the Atlantic Ocean in troduced the requirement that fishermen could only land shark fins and carcasses where the maximum weight of fins did not exceed 5 percent of the dressed carcass weights (NMFS, 1993). This 5 percent fin-to-carcass ratio applied to all managed shark species in the Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. In the 1999 FMP for Atlantic Tunas, Swordfish, and Sharks, NMFS prohibited finning of all shark species, including those that were not otherwise managed, and required recreational shark fishermen to land all sharks whole (although the sharks could be eviscerated) (NMFS,1999)"--Introduction. [doi:10.7289/V5/TM-SEFSC-712 (https://doi.org/10.7289/V5/TM-SEFSC-712)].

http://doi.org/10.7289/V5/TM-SEFSC-712

Technical Memorandum

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)