[6] Shark fins are among the most expensive seafood products in the world, and can fetch up to $300 per pound mostly in Asian markets as a soup ingredient.

Exclusive Economic Zone (up to 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) offshore), and possession of fins by any U.S.-flagged fishing vessels on international waters.

These provisions left loopholes that would successfully be exploited in its first court test, United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.

In August 2002, the destroyer USS Fife, patrolling international waters off the coast of Guatemala, intercepted the King Diamond II, a U.S.-flagged, Hong Kong-based former fishing trawler.

[9] The King Diamond II was escorted to San Diego, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement finished the investigation.

[10] In its draft form, the bill eliminated entirely the fins-to-carcass ratio that was established by the Shark Finning Prohibition Act (SFPA), and replaced it with language forbidding any U.S.-flagged vessel (not just fishing vessels) from carrying "any [shark] fin that is not naturally attached to the corresponding carcass", mirroring a law already adopted by Hawaii.

In addition, it required that the Secretary of Commerce include in a bienniel report on the enforcement of the law the names of nations which had not made significant efforts to stop shark finning.

In his report on the bill, Natural Resources Committee Chair Nick Rahall explicitly stated that its primary purpose was to close a loophole in the SFPA that had been successfully exploited in its first test case.

When that bill was passed in 2000, he noted, Delegate Eni Faleomavaega (D-AS) had raised the question of exactly the sort of transshipment the KD II had been engaged in.

[17] The Senate report, by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, reiterated that "The bill would clarify in statute what was already popularly understood to be the scope of application of the SFPA" prior to the case, but did not otherwise make any commentary regarding it.

Tom Coburn of Oklahoma objected, claiming that it and four other wildlife-related bills were "special interest" legislation that would cost too much money.

[20] In late December, near the end of the session, it was finally discharged from the committee by unanimous consent, and passed with an amendment the same way.

For non-fishing vessels found carrying detached fins, they are presumed to have been transferred in violation of the Act, unless they can prove otherwise (e.g. that the sharks were properly landed and processed before being re-shipped).

They applauded Delegate Bordallo for reintroducing the legislation, noting that it had been approved by the House of Representatives in the 110th Congress, but failed to be taken up by the Senate.