Why appetite for shark fin continues to grow despite efforts to stem the slaughter

Reading Time:5 minutes

Hundreds of shark fins dry under the sun on a factory building’s roof in Western District. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 5:30pm, 20 Sep 2016Updated: 9:10am, 21 Sep 2016

When Chinese shipping giant Cosco pledged to stop carrying shark fin in July, it was hailed as a huge blow to the controversial international trade that has shrunk the species’ population.

Cosco is the world’s fourth largest container firm, with 7.7 per cent of market share, and its policy change meant 68 per cent of shipping firms had committed to stop carrying shark fins.

The shift is the result of ongoing campaigning against the now notorious trade, though activists say more work is needed to end the business altogether.

Millions of sharks are slaughtered each year, their fins sliced off and shipped to Hong Kong. There they are laid out in the open to dry and crispen, and then exported to China to be processed.

Much of the final product finds its way back into soups on banquet tables across the city.

The fight to end shark fin consumption has been gaining traction over the last decade, spurred by a boom in the trade as deepening pockets across China heighten demand for a dish viewed as a status symbol owing in part to a decadently high price tag.

Shark numbers have shrunk dramatically since China’s economic rise. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) data shows only 15 shark and related species were threatened in 1996, and that that number rose twelvefold in the decade to 2006.