Most of the sharks that reach the fin market are now listed as threatened, and the international response has moved from voluntary appeals to enforceable trade law: since 2022, almost every shark whose fins are commercially traded requires a CITES permit to cross a border.
The United States banned the domestic shark fin trade outright in December 2022, twelve years after it closed the finning loophole in its own waters. Roughly twenty countries have declared national shark sanctuaries. None of this has yet pushed total shark fishing mortality down, because the meat trade has grown while the fin trade contracted.
- Sharks and rays threatenedMore than one third
- Fin trade now under CITESRequiem sharks and hammerheads, 2022
- US shark fin tradeBanned nationwide, December 2022
On this page
What the listings say now
Older versions of this page carried a tidy breakdown: so many species assessed, eleven Critically Endangered, fifteen Endangered, forty-eight Vulnerable. Those counts were already out of date when they were written, and they are badly out of date now. Assessment coverage has expanded enormously, and the picture it produced is worse than the one it replaced.
The 2021 global review of sharks, rays and chimaeras covered 1,199 species and found more than a third of them threatened with extinction. Within sharks, risk rises sharply with body size and with how close a species lives to a fishing port. Small deep-water dogfishes and catsharks are mostly Least Concern. The large coastal and oceanic sharks — the ones with commercially valuable fins — are not.
Three examples make the pattern concrete. The scalloped hammerhead and the great hammerhead are both Critically Endangered. The shortfin mako is Endangered, having been moved two categories in a single assessment. The silky shark is Vulnerable. What links them is not habitat or behaviour. It is the price of their fins. The IUCN Red List page explains how the categories are decided.
Which sharks actually end up in the bowl
For most of the trade's history nobody could say, because a dried fin carries no label and very little that a customs officer can identify by eye. That changed when researchers began genetic testing of fins bought in Hong Kong retail markets, the historic centre of the business.
The results were consistent across several studies. The single most common species in the trade is the blue shark, which is abundant, caught constantly as bycatch on tuna longlines, and accounts for roughly a third of the fin trimmings sampled. Behind it comes a long tail of species in far more trouble: hammerheads, silky sharks, threshers and makos. A large share of the fins tested came from species now on CITES appendices, and a majority of the species identified were listed as threatened.
The other finding was geographic. Fins sampled in one market came from animals caught across every ocean basin, which is why national bans alone were never going to be enough. A fin cut in the eastern Pacific can be dried in one country, processed in a second and eaten in a third. What the dish itself is, and why the fin is used at all, is covered on our shark fin soup page.
The laws that exist, and what each one does
The United States moved in two stages. The Shark Conservation Act, passed by Congress in 2010 and signed in January 2011, required almost every shark taken in federal waters to be brought in whole, fins attached, which finished finning as a practice on American boats. It did not touch the market: fins caught elsewhere could still be imported, bought and sold.
That gap closed in December 2022, when the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act was enacted as part of the annual defence bill. It made it illegal to possess, buy, sell or transport shark fins anywhere in the United States, with narrow exceptions for research and for the smooth dogfish fishery. Hawaii had led the way at state level in 2010, and about a dozen states had followed before the federal ban made the patchwork redundant.
Internationally the instrument that matters is CITES, the convention governing trade in threatened species. Sharks were added in stages: oceanic whitetip, porbeagle and three hammerheads in 2013, silky and thresher sharks in 2016, makos in 2019, and at the 2022 conference the entire requiem shark family along with the remaining hammerheads. The practical effect is that the overwhelming majority of fins in international trade now need a permit certifying the catch was legal and sustainable. How the porbeagle and thresher fisheries that prompted those listings actually operate is covered under the danger fishing presents to shark populations.
Sanctuaries, reserves and the problem of enforcement
Palau declared the world's first national shark sanctuary in 2009, shutting the whole of its exclusive economic zone to commercial shark fishing. Around twenty countries and territories have since done something similar, among them the Bahamas, the Maldives, Honduras and the Marshall Islands, and several large marine reserves protect sharks as part of a wider closure — the Galápagos, Cocos Island, the Chagos Archipelago and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park among them.
Sanctuaries work where three conditions hold: the sharks in question are resident rather than migratory, the area is small enough or rich enough to patrol, and there is a domestic industry with a reason to report violations. Reef sharks inside a well-policed reserve recover measurably. Oceanic species that cross the boundary every few days gain much less, because the protection stops at a line on a chart that the animal cannot read.
Enforcement is the recurring weakness. A reserve without surveillance is a map annotation, and several of the largest closures sit thousands of kilometres from the nearest patrol vessel. Satellite tracking of fishing fleets has narrowed the gap considerably over the last decade, and some sanctuaries now fund enforcement directly from the tourism the sharks generate.
Has any of it worked?
Partly, and unevenly. The clearest success is that finning at sea is no longer a normal commercial practice in most of the world's fleets, and the fin trade has contracted substantially from its peak. The clearest failure is that total shark fishing mortality has not followed it down, because the market shifted from fins to meat rather than disappearing.
The economic argument has held up better than most people expected. A study of Palau's dive industry calculated that a single reef shark was worth close to two million dollars over its lifetime to the local tourism economy, against roughly a hundred dollars as a one-off catch. A global survey put shark watching at around 314 million dollars a year in direct expenditure and projected it would more than double within two decades. Where those numbers are real and local, protection tends to stick.
What has not worked is any measure that relies on goodwill without a rule behind it. The realistic reading is that the trade rules have bought time for the species with the worst listings, and that the next decade will be decided by whether catch limits are set for the meat fisheries that now do most of the killing. The background is on why sharks are endangered, and the practical list is ten easy ways to help save sharks.
Frequently asked questions
Is shark fin soup illegal?
The dish itself is legal in most countries, but the trade behind it is increasingly not. The United States banned the possession and sale of shark fins nationwide in December 2022, and since the same year almost every commercially traded shark requires a CITES permit to cross an international border. Enforcement varies by port.
Which shark species is most common in the fin trade?
The blue shark. Genetic testing of fins bought in Hong Kong markets found it accounted for roughly a third of the material sampled. It is abundant, lives in the open ocean worldwide and is caught constantly as bycatch on tuna and swordfish longlines, which keeps it flowing into the trade in huge volume.
What is the Shark Conservation Act?
A United States law passed in 2010 and signed in January 2011 that requires sharks caught in federal waters to be landed with their fins naturally attached. It ended finning on American vessels but left the market open, which is why a separate ban on buying and selling fins was needed twelve years later.
How many countries have shark sanctuaries?
Around twenty countries and territories have declared national shark sanctuaries, beginning with Palau in 2009. They close an entire exclusive economic zone to commercial shark fishing. Their effectiveness depends heavily on whether the sharks are resident species and whether anyone is available to patrol the water.
Does CITES protect sharks?
It regulates their trade rather than protecting the animals directly. Sharks were added in stages between 2013 and 2022, and the 2022 listing of the entire requiem shark family plus the remaining hammerheads brought the great majority of the fin trade under permit. A permit requires proof the catch was legal and sustainable.
Is shark ecotourism worth more than shark fishing?
In specific places, clearly yes. A study of Palau valued one reef shark at close to two million dollars over its lifetime to the dive industry, against about a hundred dollars as a catch. Globally, shark watching has been estimated at around 314 million dollars a year in direct spending.
Are shark populations recovering anywhere?
In a few well-managed fisheries and inside enforced reserves. North Atlantic porbeagle and spiny dogfish stocks have begun to rebuild under quota, and reef shark numbers rise inside patrolled marine parks. Recovery is measured in decades because sharks mature late and produce few young.
What is the biggest gap in shark conservation now?
Catch limits for the shark meat fisheries. Finning rules and trade permits have reshaped how sharks are landed and sold, but they place no ceiling on how many may be caught. Until the meat trade is capped the way tuna quotas are, total mortality is unlikely to fall.
References
A small team focused on researching sharks and making marine biology easy to understand. Every page is reviewed against current species records and the SharkSider attack database, and updated when new incidents or research appear.
Published December 30, 2016 · Last updated September 23, 2026 · Filed under Shark Conservation.
