Ocean conservationist and Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson started a social media campaign Monday asking followers to write to Costa Rica's new president, Luis Guillermo Solís, and urge that an extradition request be dropped.
Two weeks ago, before leaving on a trip to the country's distant Isla del Coco, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla stood before the press at the Caldera Coast Guard base in the country's central Pacific and discussed her legacy in marine conservation.
This case just keeps getting more bizarre by the minute. Now taxpayers will have to foot the bill for 650 shark fins seized from a finning boat in 2011, as well as the defendant's legal fees. So ordered Puntarenas Judge Franklin Lara.
Kathy Tseng, a Taiwanese-Costa Rican businesswoman, was absolved Monday in a Puntarenas court on charges of illegally landing 652 shark fins on a Costa Rican dock in 2011. According to prosecutors and ocean conservation groups, the landmark ruling by a Puntarenas judge has opened multiple loopholes for finners looking to skirt the law.
Long-awaited changes could be coming to the country's fishing regulatory agency, Incopesca. President Laura Chinchilla sent a bill to the Legislative Assembly last week that, if passed, would eliminate Incopesca's controversial board of directors.
On Sunday, coast guard officers detained a fishing boat in Quepos, Puntarenas, on the Pacific coast, and found 21 shark fins on board weighing four kilograms, which likely came from four sharks, according to a statement from the Public Security Ministry.
In its toughest move yet to eradicate illegal fishing, the European Union on Monday blacklisted Belize, effectively banning the country's products from the world's most valuable seafood market.
The case started in 2011, when a boat belonging to the case’s defendant, Taiwanese-Costa Rican Kathy Tseng Chang, docked in Puntarenas, on Costa Rica's central Pacific coast. Fishermen on Tseng’s boat had allegedly carved out all of the meat, bones and innards of 36 sharks, leaving only the spinal column with the fins attached by strips of skin.
