August 20, 2026
A new Nature Communications analysis finds that shark-finning regulations, while important, have not produced a statistically significant change in global shark-product exports, imports, domestic consumption, or trading partnerships. The study by UCSB researchers McDonald et. al result is a clear warning: preventing the wasteful act of finning at sea must be paired with enforceable fishing limits and meaningful controls on the shark-fin trade.
What is shark finning?
Shark finning is the practice of catching a shark, cutting off its fins, and discarding its body at sea—alive or dead. The animal may then drown, bleed to death, or be eaten by other animals. The practice is driven by the high value of fins relative to shark meat, particularly for use in shark-fin soup.
Many jurisdictions now prohibit finning, often by requiring that sharks be landed with their fins naturally attached. This is far easier to enforce than a fin-to-carcass weight ratio, which can conceal the true number and identity of sharks caught and create opportunities to mix fins from protected species into legal shipments.
Yet a ban on finning does not automatically mean fewer sharks are killed. A shark can still be legally—or illegally—caught, landed whole, processed, and sold into a global market for fins, meat, oil, and other products.
What the new study found
The new research combined fisheries, trade, and regulatory data across 188 countries to examine whether domestic finning regulations changed global trade in shark products. It found no statistically significant relationship between finning rules and global exports, imports, domestic consumption, or numbers of trade partners.news.ucsb
That does not mean finning and fin bans are useless. They can reduce a particularly cruel and wasteful practice and improve accountability at sea. But the study shows that the shark-product supply chain is more complicated than a single policy lever. When sharks must be landed whole, more meat may enter markets; meanwhile, trade can shift among countries rather than disappear according to the UCSB study.
The lesson is simple: policy must follow the shark from ocean to market.
The scale of shark overfishing
Boris Worm and colleagues’ 2024 global assessment found that shark fishing mortality rose from 76 million to 80 million sharks per year during the study period, despite a more than tenfold rise in protective legislation intended to reduce finning. More than 30 percent of recorded catch involved species threatened with extinction. When sharks that were not identified to species were included, the estimate reached 101 million sharks killed in 2019.sharkstewards
Shark Stewards emphasizes an important distinction: not every shark killed in fisheries is necessarily “finned” at sea, and exact totals for finning are difficult to establish because the practice is often unreported. But demand for fins remains a major economic incentive behind directed shark fishing and the retention of sharks caught incidentally in tuna and swordfish fisheries.
This matters because sharks generally grow slowly, mature late, and produce relatively few young. Their populations cannot quickly replace heavy fishing losses.
Solutions that match the problem
To protect sharks, governments and regional fisheries bodies should combine fishing rules, trade controls, enforcement, and demand reduction.
- Require fins naturally attached. All sharks should be landed with fins naturally attached, with no fin-to-carcass ratio loopholes. This makes it easier for inspectors to count animals, identify species, and detect prohibited catch.sharkstewards
- Set science-based catch and retention limits. Fisheries managers should establish species-specific catch limits, prohibit retention of threatened sharks, reduce bycatch in tuna and swordfish fisheries, and close fisheries when population data do not support sustainable harvest.
- Protect endangered and CITES-listed sharks from trade. CITES Appendix II listings require international trade to be legal, traceable, and sustainable; Appendix I provides the strongest protection by generally prohibiting commercial international trade. Shark Stewards has advocated CITES protections for species including hammerheads, reef sharks, requiem sharks, guitarfish, whale sharks, and oceanic whitetips.sharkstewards+1
- Ban the commercial shark-fin trade for protected species—and enforce it. Customs authorities need species identification tools, DNA testing, shipment documentation, and penalties that deter trafficking. Dried fins are often difficult to identify visually, allowing fins from threatened species to enter markets.sharkstewards
- Fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Governments should require vessel tracking, electronic monitoring, observer coverage, port inspections, transparent catch records, and traceability from vessel to final sale.
- End markets that cannot prove legal, sustainable sourcing. The United States has prohibited the import, export, and sale of shark fins under the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act. Shark Stewards argues that comparable trade restrictions are needed in other major fishing, processing, and consumer markets.
- Educate Consumers in Asia – most shark fins are consumed in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and a few other SE Asian countries. Shifting consumption away from shark fins soup will reduce the market demand and with it the incentive to trade fins, or kill sharks only for their fins.
A better standard
The goal cannot merely be to ensure that sharks are killed less wastefully. It must be to prevent unsustainable and illegal killing in the first place.
Shark Stewards’ position points toward the necessary approach: regulate fisheries, enforce laws against illegal fishing, and regulate or end the shark-fin trade—especially for endangered, threatened, and CITES-listed species. Finning bans are a necessary floor. Effective catch limits, shark-retention prohibitions, full traceability, and strong trade protections are the path to keeping sharks alive in the ocean.