This week brought us nauseating media coverage of a rogue captain in Miami slaughtering a giant hammerhead shark, ostensibly to drum up charter business. On the flip side, we picked up positive—if less-publicized--news about an international agreement to ban the wasteful practice of shark finning.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) recently adopted a United States proposal to ban shark finning in Atlantic waters. Finning describes the act of cutting off marketable shark fins, then discarding the fish to save space on a commercial vessel. The practice results in huge numbers of sharks being killed, causing great declines in many shark species.

Finning has been illegal in U.S. Atlantic waters since 1993, and now the ICCAT agreement requires other nations fishing Atlantic and Mediterranean waters to prohibit the practice as well.

“All fishing nations recognize the importance and value of healthy shark populations, and we are pleased that our international partners share our goal of preventing further decline of sharks and rebuilding depleted stocks,” noted Willam Hogarth, director of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service.

International conservation efforts received another major boost at the United Nations General Assembly, which passed a resolution urging nations to implement better management of sharks. Co-sponsors of the proposal included Canada, the European Community, Japan, Mexico, Panama, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.