Yahoo! CEO to Quit-Now's the time to move on Alibaba.com

In a surprise announcement today Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has announced his departure from the company he helped found.

As we and many others within the shark community have been highlighting it was under Jerry Yangs tenure that Yahoo! invested over one billion dollars in B2B web portal Alibaba.com which quickly became recognised as the New York Stock Exchange for hundreds of tons of dried sharks fin sales on the Internet-daily.

Under Yangs governance Yahoo's investment in shark finning was put aside as "a cultural practices issue". Meanwhile other Fortune 500 companies from Disney to Royal Thai Airlines bowed out of shark fin involvement in any form citing the need for large corporations to "show leadership on animal issues".

Now is the time for the shark community to remind Yahoo! of it's obligations beyond profits and beyond billion dollar agreements with Chinese web portals. Yahoo's incoming CEO will have a crippled company on his hands and there's a good chance Yahoo! will be desperately looking for eligible business partners to shore up mounting losses in revenue.

If there was anytime in Yahoo's history where uncomfortable and public issues such as the live dismemberment of animals for profit would have an impact it is now. The new CEO of Yahoo! will be looking for any way to quickly change the companies fortunes and image and a reversal of this horrific investment shark finning would be a perfect first step.

It's a step our community will have to push Yahoo! into but time, for once, is on our side.

Shark DNA Markers-Hope In FINS

From A Couple Dives Blog this morning good news on the tech front with shark fins and mislabeled shark products.

With testing like this in "field conditions" companies like Alibaba.com and Yahoo! can be held to account for the selling and trafficking of protected shark species:

New technology can provide a way to stop seafood companies from mislabeling shark meat.

Researchers in Spain are reporting that a new DNA identification method could put an end to the false labeling of shark species used in seafood products, such as the expensive Chinese delicacy known as shark fin soup. The study is scheduled to be released in the November 26 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The scientists describe the use of a relatively new technique called forensically informative nucleotide sequencing (FINS), in which DNA isolated from unknown biologic samples is compared to a database of DNA markers from known species.

The unfortunate truth is that the consumption of shark meat appears to be on the rise worldwide. And, for now, the only recourse shark conservationists may have would be to regulate the species of sharks that are consumed. Recent reports have shed light on some seafood companies having substituted cheaper shark species for more expensive species and incorrectly labeling their products. EU regulations now require listing the species name on shark products to avoid fraud and to help conserve protected shark species. However, a fast, reliable method for distinguishing between different species of shark remains undiscovered.

In the new study, the scientists collected DNA markers from nine different commercial seafood samples containing shark meat and compared them to known DNA markers from 23 different shark species. The scientists found that two of the nine shark products analyzed had been labeled with incorrect species names, demonstrating the effectiveness for the FINS method.

EBay Going Unnoticed-Template for Alibaba.com

Something remarkable happened last month in terms of eco enforcement and for the most part this watershed event went unnoticed by the larger NGO community and the broader implications for the ongoing battle against Alibaba.com and Yahoo!

EBay has decided to ban the sale of Ivory products system wide. As it turns out EBay's decision to institute the ban came just before the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) released findings from a three-month investigation in 11 countries.

This study is in our humble opinion first rate work by an NGO that resulted in an opening to both Yahoo! and it's 50% stake in Alibaba.com for continued unregulated sales of shark fin. As we have been covering Alibaba.com is "The New York Stock Exchange" of shark fin sales world wide and remain one of if not the largest sharks fin portal on the planet.

The problem with these sales? 100% are unregulated with many protected species being sold along with literally tons of sharks fin that are being moved daily through this site. Worldwide sharks are being killed at an estimated 50-70 million animals a year to feed the lucrative Asian fin market. Yahoo! Inc is a California based company with a multi billion dollar stake in Alibaba.com. Yahoo! has refused any discussion about it's involvement in this ongoing slaughter calling the issue a "cultural practices one" (see video).

Congratulations to EBay for seeing the light, now all eyes turn to Yahoo! Will they see the light as well? For our money as long as Jerry Yang is at the helm, probably not.

Recent Yahoo! stock numbers here.