Michael Wu, CEO Maxim’s Caterers Limited, Director of Dairy Farm Group, Director of Jardines Group 18/F, Maxim’s Centre, No.17 Cheung Shun Street, Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong 05 February 2018 Dear Michael Wu, Re: Sustainability at Maxim’s Caterers Limited (Shark Fin) We note and applaud your company’s moves towards sustainable development over recent years. There is, however, an aspect of your company’s operations that directly contradicts its commitment to saving the environment, which is Maxim’s Caterers Limited (Maxim’s) continued sales of shark fin. Simply put, the consumption of shark fin at over 50 Maxim’s outlets across Hong Kong is directly contributing to the endangerment of shark species, and the marine environment – in Asia and beyond. More specifically, a comprehensive scientific study conducted by a consortium of scientists from Hong Kong and the United States discovered that at least 76 species of sharks are commonly found in the trade in Hong Kong, of which almost one third are listed as under threat of extinction on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.1 Despite repeated calls from the public for Maxim’s to stop selling shark fin, we note that your company continues to serve unsustainable and often illegally-sourced shark fin – despite an abundance of scientific evidence which points to the fact that this practice not only destroys marine biodiversity, but is pushing shark species to the brink of extinction. According to WWF Hong Kong, a quarter of all sharks and related species are threatened with extinction.2 Around 100 million sharks are unsustainably slaughtered each year, with around 73 million sharks targeted solely for their fins. The practice of shark finning is not only unsustainable, it is cruel and inhumane. Sharks have their fins hacked off whilst still alive and are then thrown back into the sea still living. Finned sharks then either starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown (if they are not in constant movement their gills can no longer extract oxygen from water). Noting Maxim’s communications in June 2017 where your company stated that; “We take responsibility in sustainable sourcing while continuing to respond to our customers’ changing preferences. We will also closely monitor new environmental factors, and review our strategies responsibly3”, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that blue sharks (Prionace glauca) were added to Appendix II of the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) in October 2017. The inclusion of blue sharks on CMS marks an important milestone in shark conservation. The CMS listing of blue sharks shows how concerned governments everywhere are about the total lack of management of this species. CMS Appendix II listings are designed to stimulate better government coordination globally, and show that measures such as catch limits – and even a CITES Appendix II listing – will be needed if blue shark fisheries and trade are to be made genuinely sustainable, not just assumed to be with little evidence and no management or safeguards. We commend the University of Hong Kong for banning shark fin from all university functions as early as 2005 “in accordance with [their] commitment to protect and conserve biological diversity”. According to WWF-Hong Kong, to date, a total of 206 companies covering 100,000 employees in Hong Kong have committed to the WWF-Hong Kong ’No Shark Fin’ corporate pledge. These companies include international banks, small and medium enterprises, as well as major hotels, such as the Jardine Matheson-owned Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Starwood Hotels, the Shangri-La Group and the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Limited.4 Further, a total of 17 global container shipping lines and 44 airlines have stopped carrying shark fin as cargo, in large part due to perceived business risk, but also for Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) reasons. It is clear that the shipping and trading of shark fin poses many environmental, legal and even reputational risks. In 2013 the State Council of the People’s Republic of China banned shark fin soup at official banquets nationwide. That year, the Hong Kong government also followed suit with a complete ban on the consumption of shark fin by all government officials and civil servants. It is clear that setting ’No Shark Fin’ policies is the direction that society is moving towards. Maxim’s has ignored repeated requests from the public to show the same environmental leadership as the central 1 Fields, A. T., Fischer, G. A., Shea, S. K. H., Zhang, H., Abercrombie, D. L., Feldheim, K. A., Babcock, E. A. and Chapman, D. D. (2017), Species composition of the international shark fin trade assessed through a retail-market survey in Hong Kong. Conservation Biology. doi:10.1111/cobi.13043 2 https://apps.wwf.org.hk/file/SharkReport/wwf_riskybusiness_report_eng.pdf 3 http://wildaid.org.hk/sites/default/files_tmp/Maxim_Reply_Shark_Fin_10June.pdf 4 https://www.wwf.org.hk/en/news/?20120/Feature-Story-The-No-Shark-Fin-Policy government authorities, the Hong Kong government, the logistics sector and the 206 companies who have taken the WWF- Hong Kong ’No Shark Fin’ corporate pledge. Maxim’s is partially owned by Jardines whose Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group banned shark fin in 2015. It is therefore inconsistent for Maxim’s to continue selling shark fin. Your company has stated publicly that it serves blue shark which you maintain is “lower risk”. However, your company is ignoring the wealth of scientific evidence that indicates the contrary. “Lower risk” does not mean “no risk”. Due to no catch limits in the North West Atlantic and the Central and Western Pacific Ocean, blue shark fishing is far from sustainable. The last blue shark stock assessment from International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was conducted in 2005 and can no longer be considered accurate. Crucially, multiple peer-reviewed publications have since 2005 documented declines in blue shark populations:- – >50% decline in the North Pacific from 1996 to 2009 (5% per year) — Clarke et al. 20125 – Blue shark fishing is approaching, and will soon exceed, minimum sustainable yield in the North Atlantic – UNEP, 20176 – 80% decline in male blue sharks in the North Atlantic from the mid 1980s to early 1990s — Heuter & Simpfendorfer, 20087 – 87% decline in the Central Pacific from the 1950s to the 1990s (5-6% decline per year) — Ward & Myers, 20058 – IUCN Shark Specialist Group members estimate only 4% of shark and ray fisheries are sustainably managed and none of these are blue shark fisheries. The fisheries considered to be sustainably managed are mainly for some rays, chimaeras and small sharks that are not preferred for shark fin soup — Dulvy & Simpfendorfer, 20179 – Finning (dumping the bodies at sea) of blue sharks still happens, even in monitored fisheries. — Clarke et al. 201210 – “In the Northwest Atlantic, blue sharks spend up to 92% of their time on the high seas, where they are largely unregulated and unmonitored. They are caught in large numbers by swordfish and tuna fishing fleets from a large number of nations, usually unintentionally, and are unproductive by fish standards, which makes them particularly sensitive to fishing pressure. Landing statistics that grossly underrepresent actual catches, unreported discards that often exceed landings, and high discard mortality rates are threats to the populations and roadblocks to useful population monitoring. The influence of these threats is greatly magnified by inattention and ineffective management from the responsible management agency, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), whose prime focus is the more valuable swordfish and tuna stocks.” — Campana, 201611 – In Peru, which is one of the top 12 suppliers of blue shark fins to Hong Kong, 74.7% of blue sharks caught were deemed sexually immature and under the legal minimum landing size. — Doherty, 201412 5 Clarke S, Harley S, Hoyle S, Rice J. 2012. Population trends in Pacific Oceanic Sharks and the Utility of Regulations on Shark Finning. Conservation Biology, Contributed Paper: 1-13. 6 UNEP, 2017. Samoa and Sri Lanka successful inclusion of the blue shark (Prionace glauca) on Appendix II of the Convention, 12th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties of Convention on Migratory Species, Manila, Philippines, 23-28 October 2017 Agenda Item 25.1, Convention on Migratory Species. 7 Hueter RE & Simpfendorfer CA. 2008. Trends in blue shark abundance in the western North Atlantic as determined by a fishery-independent survey. In Sharks of the Open Ocean, M Camhi and E.K. Pikitch, eds. Blackwell Scientific Publ., Fish and Aquatic Resources Series 13:236-241. 8 Ward P & Myers RA. 2005. Shifts in open-ocean fish communities coinciding with the commencement of commercial fishing. Ecology 86(4): 835-847. 9 Dulvy NK & Simpfendorfer CA. 2017. Bright spots of sustainable shark fishing. Current Biology Magazine 27, R1-R3. 10 Clarke S, Harley S, Hoyle S, & Rice J. 2012. Population trends in Pacific Oceanic Sharks and the Utility of Regulations on Shark Finning. Conservation Biology, Contributed Paper: 1-13. 11 Campana SE. 2016. Transboundary movements, unmonitored fishing mortality, and ineffective international fisheries management pose risks for pelagic sharks in the Northwest Atlantic. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 73: 1599-1607. 12 Doherty PD, Alfaro-Shigueto J, Hodgson DJ, Mangel JC, Witt MJ, & Godley BJ. 2014. Big catch, little sharks: Insight into Peruvian small-scale longline fisheries. Ecology and Evolution 4(12): 2375-2383. – Global shark chondrichthyan (shark, ray, skate and chimaera) landings peaked in 2003 and declined by almost 20% over the next decade. Authors found that landings declines were mainly attributed to fishing pressure and that current fisheries management measures did not have the strength or coverage to halt overfishing and avert population declines.