196 Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide
skates, and rays are caught annually in targeted fisheries (including 30 to 70
million sharks for the fin trade), and an equal number may be caught and
never reach a market. On a weight basis, about 760,000 MT (1.7 billion
lb) of chondrichthyans are reported as caught annually, but that number
probably doubles to 1.5 million MT (3.4 billion lb) when the unreported
bycatch numbers are added. Few fishing operations go to any trouble to
release sharks alive because sharks caught in other operations that aren’t
finned are viewed as nuisances, using up bait intended for more valuable
fishes, tangling lines, and slowing the fishing operation. Fishermen take
out their frustration on the sharks.
Reducing bycatch therefore benefits fishers as well as sharks. The trick,
of course, is coming up with a fishing technique that catches the more de-
sirable, targeted species while repelling sharks. One of the more promising
methods being tested is the incorporation into baited hooks of magnets
and electropositive metals, which sharks find undesirable (See “How can
sharks be repelled?” in chapter 9).
What is finning?
In some places, fishers remove the fins from sharks and discard the car-
cass, now referred to as a “log.” The finless shark, sometimes still alive,
then sinks to the bottom to slowly starve to death or to be killed by preda-
tors and scavengers.
Shark meat has value, but shark fins are one of the most expensive forms
of seafood around. Depending on species, shark steaks and fillets can cost a
few dollars a pound or as much as $22/kg ($48/lb), although concern over
high mercury content affects the marketability of some species. In contrast,
the fins of sharks and large rays, when dried, processed, and sold in Asia,
can cost as much as $1,650/kg ($3,630/lb). This makes shark fins one of the
world’s most valuable fishery products, worth almost twice as much as the
most expensive Bluefin Tuna and approaching the value of fine caviar.
Dried fins are used in the preparation of shark fin soup, popular at wed-
ding banquets and business dinners in Hong Kong. Ironically, the soup
may contain little actual fin, this ingredient having been minimized to keep
the price affordable (a bowl may sell for as much as $150). The cartilage
supports in the fins, referred to as “noodles,” are used primarily as a thick-
ener, the flavor coming largely from chicken or other meat stock. The soup
may even be filtered before serving and the solid fin parts discarded.
Hong Kong imported 7,800 MT (17.2 million lb) of shark fins worth
US$250 million in 1996. Since fins account for only 4% of the body weight
of a shark, approximately 200,000 tons, or 440 million pounds, of sharks
were killed in the process. Hong Kong is said to account for half of the
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