Pacific, Fiji’s international airline, has been accused of hypocrisy for backing shark conservation for public relations while flying shark fins to HK.Last year the airline sponsored “Happy Hearts Love Sharks”, a contest run by the Hong Kong Shark Foundation, which was aimed at encouraging newlyweds to set an example by not serving dishes containing shark fin during wedding banquets. The international trade in shark fin, centered in Hong Kong, is blamed for decimating shark populations.
For Air Pacific the competition was an ideal opportunity to promote their twice-weekly direct flights to Hong Kong by offering free tickets to Fiji to the winners. Trumpeting its support on competition website, the airline said: "We are proud to support the Happy Hearts Love Sharks wedding contest, because shark tourism is an important source of revenue for the local economy and because Fijians have long respected sharks.
"Our ancestors viewed sharks as gods who kept the community safe from harm and they would feed sharks, not hunt them. Today, this tradition is continued by local villages having jobs as shark feeders who dive with tourists so that they can experience the beauty of sharks in their natural habitat."
But just five months later, Air Pacific's environmental boasts have a hollow ring as a letter signed by a coalition of environmental groups accuses it of carrying shark fins as cargo on passenger flights to Hong Kong.
Suspicions about the Air Pacific’s role in the shark fin trade were triggered when Hong Kong’s Secretary for Transport and Housing, Anthony Cheung, made a speech in March at a welcoming reception for a new Airbus A330-200 on the airline's Hong Kong route.
"There were only 45 tonnes of cargo being carried between Hong Kong and Fiji in 2009. By the end of last year, the cargo volume was close to 1,000 tonnes. Thanks to the close aviation links, we in Hong Kong can now enjoy various kinds of seafood products from the South Pacific as Fiji is one of the major exporters of fish and fishery products to Hong Kong.” said Cheung."
"It's not pineapples or electronics that are being flown here from Fiji - you can be sure of that," Hong Kong Shark Foundation director Alex Hofford told the South China Morning Post, when asked about the 20-fold leap in airfreight tonnage from Fiji to Hong Kong in just three years.
His suspicions were confirmed, he said, when a group of pilots familiar with Air Pacific's operations subsequently told him the new Airbus was "basically a thinly-disguised freighter" carrying shark fins to the territory from Pacific islands, which use Fiji as a trade hub.
"You may be on an Air Pacific flight where you think: 'This can't be making money - the plane is empty'. But the fact is it's full of cargo," he said. "They can afford to lose money on the passenger side because they're making money on airfreight."
As pressure from the anti-finning lobby mounts, Hofford believes Air Pacific may be, in part, taking up the slack from Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways, which last year bowed to pressure from environmental groups and halted all shark-fin cargoes - estimated by activists to have been as much as 650 tonnes in 2011.
