By Wendy Anders

Last week, a Costa Rican court delivered a historic sentence, and for the first time served criminal charges for the illegal practice of shark finning.

The court sentenced a Taiwanese business owner to prison over a haul of illegally hacked-off shark fins destined for sale abroad, officials and environmentalists said last Thursday, Feb. 9.

The verdict, handed down last Monday by the court in the Pacific port city of Puntarenas, sentenced the businesswoman by the last name of Tsung to six months behind bars.

The practice of shark finning involves slicing off a shark’s fins before dropping the live fish back in the sea, basically amounting to a deadly mutiliation as the animals can no longer swim and either are attacked or bleed or starve to death.

Shark fins fetch a high price in Asia, where they are often used in soups served on special occasions.

Tseng’s was “a historic sentence,” said Gladys Martinez, lawyer for the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA).

The case began in October 2011, when her fishing boat, the Wan Jia Men 88, was found with 151 sharks aboard with the fins chopped off.

Initially acquitted in 2014, the case was appealed, and she was found guilty of  damaging Costa Rica’s natural resources by the Puntarenas court.