Word: fishermen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...though the fins are being fed to starving children. They're used in Asia for shark-fin soup, a delicacy that fetches up to $150 a bowl. The market for shark fins is incredibly profitable; U.S. fishermen earn as much as $25 per lb. for fins, compared with 50[cents] per lb. for shark meat. The trade has grown dramatically since commerce with China began expanding in the 1980s: some 125 nations are now involved...
Though far less profitable, shark meat has also enjoyed a sales boom since the early 1980s. Tuna and swordfish stocks began to dwindle at that time, and the U.S. government encouraged fishermen to pursue other targets. That may have been a big mistake. Traditional food fish, like cod and tuna, grow quickly and lay millions of eggs at a time. Sharks, by contrast, can take two decades to reach sexual maturity, have a long gestation period and bear only a few young at one time. Killing a relatively small number of females can dramatically limit the reproductive potential...
...this year's quota for large coastal sharks by 50%, to 1,285 metric tons, as well as establishing the first quota ever for small coastal sharks and banning commercial harvests of five species considered especially prone to overfishing--whale, basking, white, sand tiger and bigeye sand tiger. Outraged fishermen have responded by suing the Secretary of Commerce. Conservation is important, agrees Robert Spaeth, head of the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, but he argues that shark populations are difficult to count accurately--an assertion biologists agree with--and that the government's statistics are therefore suspect...
PRINCE RUPERT, British Columbia: The blockade of an Alaskan ferry ended today after the Canadian government promised disgruntled fishermen in British Columbia that it would pressure the United States to reopen negotiations on Pacific salmon. As the 300-boat blockade broke apart, the ferry Malaspina departed the harbor with a blast of its horns, ending a siege which kept about 135 passengers captive since Saturday. The ferry had been held hostage by Canadian fishermen who claim U.S. fishing fleets are violating a 1985 treaty on salmon fishing by netting the choicest fish in the ocean as they swim to Canada...
...Prince Rupert. The vigilantes are protesting Alaskan catches of the premier salmon as they swim toward Canada. Since quota negotiations between the neighbors collapsed last month, the Canadians say, their Alaskan counterparts have taken far more than their share of the prized fish, threatening to put the Canadian fishermen out of work. That has stirred up some memories. "Canadians have learned bitter lessons from the unemployment that happened in Newfoundland when the cod fisheries disappeared," says TIME's Nicole Nolan in Toronto. Canadian fishermen suffered during a four year ban on all commercial cod fishing in the early nineties brought...