Shark finning is a worldwide issue, with at least 73 million sharks killed each year due to finning. The majority of the time the sharks are finned and then thrown back into the oceans to die. The main driving force behind shark finning is a Chinese delicacy, which is called shark fin soup.
In order to determine the source of the fins, a group of scientists have analyzed the DNA contained in shark fins in a Hong Kong market. Led by Demian Chapman, an assistant director at Stony Brook University’s Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, the scientists took samples from living scalloped hammerhead sharks and from shark fins at the market.
In total, the scientists traced the mitochondrial DNA of 177 living scalloped hammerhead sharks living in the Western Atlantic. 62 shark fins from the Honk Kong market also had their DNA tested. The scientists found that the market fins were from the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
21 percent of the fins came from off the coasts of the United States, Panama, Brail and Belize. Scalloped hammerhead sharks are actually listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in these places. The in-depth study has been published in the journal Endangered Species Research.
With the large number of sharks being killed yearly for the delicacy, conservationists are extremely concerned for the survival of sharks worldwide. In order to bring further attention to the issue, Chapman and others will be addressing the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in March. The hope is to at the very least to list the scalloped hammerhead shark as requiring monitoring throughout the world.
Executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, Ellen Pikitch, stated: “The premium prices commanded by fins have fueled a global shark hunt of epic proportion. Earlier work found that up to 73 million sharks are killed annually to supply the fin markets, and approximately 1 to 3 million are hammerheads. Inadequate protection, combined with inexorable pursuit, has placed many shark species at grave risk.”
