Comment from WhoPoo App

There is absolutely no reason to cater to shark fishermen in the United States and open up more sharks for fishing, since most shark fishermen are illegal migrants or engaged in the sharkfin trade for China and Vietnam. Allowing more sharks to be killed will be a boon to illegal migrants, who can rely on hefty sums for sharkfin. 10,000 sharkfins are worth $11 MILLION as of November 2025. If the NOAA approves these new shark fishing regulations, you will undermine the critical work of ICE upon which Trump was elected. Maybe some of you want to do that, since you hate Trump and all he stands for, but your duty is to the American people and not your friend score on Reddit. Please divert resources to helping ICE combat illict trading in sharkfin and other materials, instead of opening up our waters to MORE fishing. A reminder too, FWC and other state wide agencies do not have the resources to combat international trafficking, they have proven this again and again with a lack of manpower and enforcement: "For millions of years, sharks were at the top of the food chain. By spreading nutrients and absorbing carbon, they keep marine ecosystems in balance, from. But today, sharks and the ecosystems are in grave danger Nearly 100 million sharks are killed every year according to the United Nations and almost a third of shark species are threatened or near threatened with extinction. The declining shark population could lead to undesirable consequences in marine ecosystems, such as the collapse of commercially and ecologically important fish populations. Shark fins are targets for fishermen because they sell for a high price and serve as a symbol of status in Eastern cultures. They are used in a popular dish called shark fin soup, which has a long history of being favored by some Eastern emperors who thought it had medicinal benefits and represented a victory against powerful sharks. That belief is unfounded but has not faded. Many fishermen practice shark finning, a brutal practice of catching a shark, pulling it onboard a boat, cutting its fins off and tossing the still-living shark back overboard. Unable to swim properly and bleeding profusely, the sharks suffocate to death or die of blood loss. But it’s not just sharks that face a brutal fate. Within poaching circles, it is said that a kilo of rhino horn is worth more than its weight in gold, making the animals a prime target for poachers. Rhino horn was used in traditional Eastern medicine, but increasingly common is its use as a status symbol to display success and wealth. Poachers are now being supplied by international criminal gangs with sophisticated equipment to track and kill rhinos. HSI Seattle Special Agent Kyle Maher knows firsthand how brutal the poachers can be when removing a rhino’s horn. While in Africa years ago, we came across a rhinoceros with its face sliced off, he said. Frequently a tranquilizer gun is used to bring the rhino down, before its horn is hacked off, leaving the rhino to wake up and bleed to death, painfully and slowly. The rare few that survive their encounters with poachers are often left with horrific gunshot, axe or machete wounds. Maher and his colleague, HSI Special Agent Robert Patterson, recently helped bring two wildlife poachers to justice. HSI Seattle’s Border Enforcement Security Taskforce and HSI Washington D.C.’s Global Investigations Group concluded a multi-year investigation with the arrest and 11-count indictment of two foreign nationals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The investigation centered on two people who previously conspired to send multiple shipments of bulk elephant ivory, pangolin scales and rhinoceros’ horn to Seattle from the DRC. We found them and started talking to them. We then started sending them money and they started sending us the product. They eventually accepted our invitation to come over to Seattle, Maher said. During the face-to-face meeting near Seattle, an HSI special agent posing as the chief buyer negotiated with the smugglers to facilitate the purchase and movement of an entire shipping container filled with wildlife-related contraband. We had previously been offered multiple tons of ivory if we were willing to buy in bulk. At the breakfast meeting we eventually came to an agreement to make a significant purchase,” Maher said. And then we told them that we would take them to meet the rest of the investors. That's when Rob [Patterson] put the handcuffs on them. In close collaboration with the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, HSI provided key intelligence to a DRC taskforce led by the DRC National Parks Security (Corps en charge de la sécurisation des Parcs Nationaux) who within 12 hours executed multiple raids seizing 2,067 pounds of raw and processed ivory along with 75 pounds of pangolin scales that the DRC valued at approximately $3.5 million." https://www.ice.gov/hsi/news/hsi-insider/wildlife-trafficking