WASHINGTON – The House took steps Tuesday to keep shark fins out of soups served in pricey Asian restaurants.

In a voice vote, the House tightened a 2000 law that bans the practice of shark finning, whereby mainly Pacific Ocean fishermen cut off a shark's fin and throw the dying fish back into the sea. Shark fin soup is a delicacy in some Asian countries.

Also on Tuesday, the House approved by voice and sent to the president legislation to implement a 1997 international treaty that limits sulfur oxide and other emissions from oceangoing vessels, a major source of pollution around the world.

The bill on sharks, whose populations are declining worldwide, prohibits vessels from having custody, control or possession of shark fins without the carcass. It closes a loophole in the 2000 act under which vessels were sailing into international waters to purchase shark fins from fishermen engaged in finning and then bringing them back into U.S. waters.

The provision was in part a response to a March federal appeals court ruling in favor of a vessel engaged in transshipping shark fins from foreign finning ships. The court said the ship, stopped with 65,000 pounds of shark fins worth more than $600,000, did not violate the law because it was not a fishing vessel.

The bill, which now goes to the Senate, also makes clear that shark fins aboard fishing and other vessels and those landed at a U.S port be naturally attached to the carcass. Current law makes it a violation when the total weight of shark fins on board exceeds 5 percent of the total weight of carcasses.

“Sharks are vital to the health of marine ecosystems, but the practice of shark finning is driving their decline worldwide,” said the bill's sponsor, Del. Madeleine Bordallo, D-Guam.

The National Coalition for Marine Conservation, in a letter to lawmakers urging support of the bill, said that since the 1970s shark populations around the world, including many species in U.S. waters, have declined by 80 percent or more.

“Driven by the lucrative shark fin soup market, the greatest threat facing sharks is a cruel and wasteful practice called finning,” it said.

The air pollution legislation directs the Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard to establish and enforce standards for nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and other air pollutants emitted by ship exhausts. It also bans deliberate emissions of ozone-depleting substances.

The measure aligns U.S. law with an International Maritime Organization convention adopted in 1997, known as Annex VI, to prevent pollution from ships.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the House Transportation Committee panel on maritime transportation, said ships are a growing threat to the world's air quality. “In fact, some estimates suggest that the emissions of sulfur oxide from ships may now exceed the combined output from all the cars, trucks and buses in the world.”

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., said more than 45 percent of all the emissions of nitrogen oxide in Santa Barbara County, which she represents, come from oceangoing transits along the coastline.

The Senate acceded to the Annex VI convention in 2006. The House passed the bill implementing the treaty – aligning it with U.S. law – more than a year ago, but the Senate waited until two weeks ago to act on that bill.

House Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar said that delay could cause repercussions. The International Maritime Organization is to meet in October to adopt more stringent air pollution standards, and failure of Congress to act swiftly on the measure could deprive U.S. negotiators of a vote.

The shark bill is H.R. 5741. The air pollution bill is H.R. 802.

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