Shark fin trade may harvest as many as 73 million sharks per year

26/03/2007 00:00:00 The first real-data into the number of sharks harvested for their fins estimates that between 26 million and 73 million sharks are killed every year—three times higher than was reported originally by the United Nations, according to a paper published as the cover story in the October 2006 edition of Ecology Letters. ‘The shark fin trade is notoriously secretive. But we used info from fin auction records to get an idea on the actual numbers,’ says lead author Shelley Clarke, Ph.D, an American fisheries scientist.

Worries over the shark fin trade have grown in the last few years as demand has outstripped sustainable levels for slow-to-produce shark populations. 3 shark species are listed on CITES, and 20% are threatened with extinction according to the 2006 Red List of Threatened Species.

Used in shark fin soup, a delicacy served at Chinese weddings and other celebrations for hundreds of years, and more recently at business dinners in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, fins are the most valuable part of the shark. The sharks are often thrown back into the sea alive once they have had their fins cut off. The shark fin trade seems to be growing by about 5% per year in China.

To work out whether shark numbers can withstand the size of catches estimated by Clarke and her team varies depending upon the size and status of each population. ‘One of the most productive sharks is the blue shark, and it appears that the catch rate is near the maximum sustainable level,’ says Clarke. ‘It is quite likely that sustainable catch levels have already been exceeded in some cases.’

Owing to the low value of shark meat, shark fins are often the only part of the shark that is kept, and often they are not recorded in the catch log or when landed at ports.

The mission of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science is to advance ocean conservation through science. Established in by a generous multi-year grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts; the Pew Institute for Ocean Science is a major program of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Courtesy of the Pew Institutre for Ocean Science.