Shark Finning

Shark finning is the practice of removing a shark's fins and discarding the rest of the animal, often still alive, back into the ocean, where it is unable to swim properly and dies by suffocation or predation. Estimates of the annual toll vary widely, from a median of around 38 million sharks a year between 1996 and 2000 to figures as high as 73 to 100 million more recently. The practice has been banned or restricted by a growing list of jurisdictions, including the European Union, which required fins to remain naturally attached to the shark's body from 2013, Canada, which has banned finning since 1994 and barred the import and export of detached fins from 2019, and the United States, where the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act of 2022 banned the sale, purchase and transport of shark fins with fines of up to one hundred thousand dollars. Common regulatory approaches include fins-naturally-attached policies and fin-to-body mass ratio limits, and by 2013 twenty seven countries had adopted some form of ban.