What is Shark Finning

Shark finning is the practice of slicing away the fins from a captured shark, and discarding the animal at sea, still living or dead. Often, sharks are captured as an untargeted animal (bycatch) in the tuna and swordfish industry. In the past, live sharks were released, but the high value and increased market for shark fins is creating huge incentive for fishermen to take the fins and discard the animal, leaving room in the ship’s hold for the more valuable meat of the tuna or swordfish. Shark finning is wasteful, inhumane and unsustainable. The huge demand for shark fin and the lucrative trade has driven illegal fishing, or killing sharks solely for the valuable fin to make shark fin soup.

What are Shark Fins used for?

Shark fins are used to make shark fin soup, a delicacy once prepared exclusively for the Chinese emperors and nobility. The cartilage from the fin is carefully dried and prepared, and used as an ingredient in a soup flavored with seafood or chicken broth and herbs. The process of preparation makes this dish very costly, as much as $100.00 a bowl, and is commonly served at banquets and weddings. The serving of the dish is considered very prestigious and even propitious.

Dried shark fin is the most expensive seafood product by weight, and is a huge incentive for fishermen to hunt sharks for their fins. Increasingly, the fins are incentive to overfish shark populations for fins attached or for fins alone.

Who Eats Shark Fin Soup?

Shark Fin Soup is Associated with Asian Cultural Celebrations. Is This an Attack on Asian Culture?

No. This is an attack on an unsustainable fishing practice. The cultural associations are modern and associated with prestige. The problem is simple economics: increasing affluence creates increased demand. This demand is exceeding the supply, which is creating a positive feedback loop, making the shark fins more difficult to obtain, and increasing the price, making the dish more expensive, increasing the prestige. This in turn motivates fishermen to obtain shark fins from a steadily diminishing source of sharks. We cannot produce another population of sharks to satisfy this market.

Many countries have had practices associated with their cultures that were recognized as harmful or unethical and were stopped to protect wildlife. We need to change consumer’s minds that it is not prestigious to eat shark fin soup and ocean health is suffering as a result of the demand. Some chefs like Kin Lui of Tataki provide healthy shark fin alternatives and say no to shark fin soup

What Sharks are targeted for finning?

Any shark is fair game, but some species are more prized than others. The large fins of Whale Sharks, Basking Sharks are coveted primarily for display purposes. Ironically, these species are among the most threatened. Pelagic species such as blue sharks are most common representing 20 million in the Hong Kong trade evaluated in 2020, however, several illegal fisheries such as those that target the Galapagos and other remote islands will capture reef sharks and hammerhead sharks. Once the most common ocean predator, Oceanic Whitetip sharks are now critically endangered, driven largely by overfishing and the shark fin trade.

Shark Fins as Cancer Treatment

It has been falsely assumed that sharks do not get cancer. This has lead to the medicinal use of shark cartilage to treat some cancers or reduce tumor growth. Although sharks have a low incidence of cancer, tumors and cancer have been identified in sharks. A study published in the Journal Cancer by Dr. Ostrander et al. of Johns Hopkins University titled Shark Cartilage, Cancer and the Growing Threat of Pseudoscience indicates that the promotion of crude shark cartilage extracts as a cure for cancer has contributed to at least two significant negative outcomes: a dramatic decline in shark populations and a diversion of patients from effective cancer treatments.

Is Finning the Problem?

Since the early 2000s laws and regulations have been implemented in the USA and other countries to ban shark finning, and require sharks landed with fins attached. A study by Worm et. al. (2024) documented an increase in shark fishing, with the associated trade in shark fin- particularly in coastal fisheries -despite anti finning laws. The study indicates sharks are being overfished at the rate of approximately 80- 100 million per year. The study also concluded that despite shark finning regulations, the shark fin trade has flourished due to an 18 fold increase in shark fishing. With 20% of all fish caught categorized as Illegal, Unreported or Unregulated (IUU) shark finning is still a problem, but overfishing is the root of the problem.

Why We Oppose Shark Finning and the Fin Trade

Simply, sharks are being overfished, fisheries are mismanaged and even in the best managed fishery, populations are still declining. Shark fin is the symptom of the disease. Although finning is clearly wrong, over-harvesting sharks for fins and meat has largely proven unsustainable in commercial fisheries. Consumers have no method of determining if their soup is from a managed fishery or from a high seas shark finning operation. Because of this, Shark Stewards believes that all shark fin products should be regulated to stop a prevailing trend for illegally finned sharks and give shark populations an opportunity to recover.

By nature, sharks are difficult to study and good fisheries data are hard to obtain. The practice of finning, which is mostly an unreported practice is robbing scientists of population and capture data. Many pelagic shark species are widespread and do not school. Many larger sharks travel vast distances alone. Most large sharks have late onset of fertility (decades) give birth to few young and have long gestation periods, making them very vulnerable to overfishing. Therefore, it is very difficult to arrive at a sustainable number. This is why most commercial shark fisheries collapse economically.

Regulating the provenance of where sharks are caught, what species and their import/export- particularly the fins – is critical to control overfishing, especially of endangered or threatened species.

With accurate population numbers, a good understanding of the target shark’s biology, and accurate reporting of animals captured, a sustainable fishery might be achieved. Until that is achieved and it can be enforced, then the trade of illegal or unregulated fins, or fins from protected species must stop.