Shark Scandal in Ecuador : Shifting Baselines

The Shifting Baselines Blog

Jennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses.
Josh Donlan is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.

Scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olson, founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project is also a blog contributor.

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November 2008 Jennifer Jacquet is lead author of the study In hot soup: sharks captured in Ecuador's waters published in Environmental Sciences.

November 27, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Why Consumers Alone Can't Save Our Fish" at 1pm at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

August 2008: Josh Donlan is co-author on a new paper titled Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles published in Biological Invasions.

August 2008: Jennifer Jacquet is co-author on a new paper titled Funding Priorities: Big Barriers to Small-Scale Fisheries published in Conservation Biology.

August 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Journal of Applied Ecology titled Diversity, invasive species, and extinctions in insular ecosystems.

July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.

July 24, 2008: Josh Donlan gives a talk on biodiversity offsets to The Alcoa Foundation and the Alcao Intalco Aluminum Plant in Bellingham, Washington.

July 22, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "A Way Forward in a Sea of Market Based Initiatives to Save Wild Fish" at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.

July 19, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the West Coast at Outfest in Hollywood, CA.

July 17, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "In Hot Soup: Shark's Captured in Ecuador's Waters" at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, TN.

July 9, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Flawed Data, Reef Fisheries, And Food Security: A Close Inspection Of Marine Fisheries Catches in Mozambique, Tanzania, Fiji, And The Solomon Islands" at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

June/July 2008: Josh Donlan attends training for his Kinship Conservation Fellowship in Bellingham, WA.

May 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Ambio titled High impact Conservation: Invasive Mammal Eradications from the Islands of Western Mexico.

May 15, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet reviews Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood at the Tyee.

April 2008: Trade Secrets: Renaming and Mislabeling of Seafood by Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly is published in Marine Policy.

April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound:.

Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.

Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card

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Shark Scandal in Ecuador

Category: Ocean Politics
Posted on: August 6, 2007 12:16 AM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet

The Galapagos Marine Reserve has trouble with illegal shark finning and a couple solutions--namely decent laws and several individuals fighting the daily Galapagos grind to keep those laws intact and sometimes enforced. One of these individuals is Sean O'Hearn of Sea Shepherd International. And he was just thrown in jail for his efforts.

In 2000, Sean came to Galapagos onbaord a Sea Shepherd boat and decided not to leave. He had grown up in Puerto Rico and settled snuggly into the island life of Galapagos with his perfect Spanish and easy attitude. He was quickly nicknamed 'leche en funda' (milk in a bag) because of his white skin and less than upright posture (I know such details because I volunteered with Sean in 2001--we're the gringos in the photo). Sean quickly gained stature in marine conservation and was pivotal in the capture and arrest of several illegal shark poachers (my first day with Sean in Galapagos included the incineration of 1044 illegally caught shark fins).

In 2006, after a few years of absence from the islands, Sean returned to Galapagos and revitalized the Sea Shepherd anti-shark poaching campaign. In June, Sean and the Ecuadorian National Police uncovered a ring of shark fin traders that led to the confiscation of nearly 20,000 shark fins and four arrests.

But the Ecuadorian shark scandal doesn't stop there. Last week, the law that prohibited the export of shark fins from Ecuador was overturned. On Friday, Sean was working with the police in Manta, the shark finning capital of Ecuador when he was arrested. On August 4th, minutes before he was about to be illegally exported (having married a 'Galapeguena', Sean is legal resident of Ecuador and the Galapagos), the President freed him.

Though liberated, Sean must be disconcerted by the death threats he has recently received. For the sharks, death isn't merely a threat.

Sharks finned and on the beach of Manta--the center of Ecuador's shark mafia. I visited Manta in May 2006, when the export of fins was illegal but clearly still taking place.