Investigation: Inside India’s illegal shark-fin trade

Almost all the shark fins from India end up in the international market. Hong Kong is India’s most important market for the fins. A shark fin smuggled out of India usually ends up in a bowl of soup.

SHAMSHEER YOUSAF: Late one August morning in 2018, an official at the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau at Navi Mumbai, received a few samples. At first glance, they looked like dried fish, cut in pieces of around one or two square inches in size. An exporter had moved a consignment to a warehouse at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust at Navi Mumbai, India’s largest container port… So, along with his colleagues, he went to the port to inspect the consignment, which comprised 200 bags. They opened and emptied the contents of all 200 bags on the floor.

There were some pieces of dried fish, similar to the samples. But among these pieces were other triangular, distinctly different pieces of dried fish, with a matte texture… The exporter was in violation of Indian law – the Union government banned the export of fins of all sharks on February 6, 2015. “I advised the customs officials to confiscate the consignment,” the official said.

The case was handed over to the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, or DRI, India’s premier law-enforcement agency to combat smuggling. They sprang into action, interrogating the exporter and investigating their trade network. There, the agency confiscated 3,000 kg of dried shark fins… On September 2, a team from the Gujarat branch of the DRI raided a godown in Veraval and confiscated another 5,000 kg of shark fins.

Still, there was more to come. During their investigation, the DRI found out that the exporter had dispatched a container with 4,000 kg of shark fins from Chennai, destined for Hong Kong. Following a request from Indian authorities, the container was offloaded in Malaysia and seized on September 4. In a matter of days, nearly 12,000 kg of shark fins were seized from just one exporter. It was the largest seizure of shark fins since the export ban in 2015. The seizure suggested that despite the ban, an illegal shark fin trade was thriving across India…

Shark fin is one of the most expensive fish products in the world. According to a 2015 report of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, the price of shark fins exported from India increased five-fold between 2000 and 2009, from below $20 per kg to $112 per kg. The price fell slightly by 2012, to $78.2 per kg… India is the third-largest shark catcher in the world. With no domestic market for shark fins, almost all the fins from India end up in the international market. Hong Kong is India’s most important market for the fins.

A shark fin smuggled out of India usually ends up in a bowl of soup. Shark fin soup is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine, considered a mark of a host’s wealth and refined taste. Dried fins are soaked in an acetic acid solution, after which the cartilage in them is separated into fin rays, which are noodle-like threads, and cooked to be served in a soup…

This demand for shark fins is frequently cited as one of the significant drivers of shark fishing. A 2006 study in the journal Ecology Letters estimated that up to 73 million sharks are killed every year for the fin trade. A paper published in Nature in January 2021 found that since 1970, the number of oceanic sharks and rays across the world has declined by 71%, owing to a massive spike in fishing pressure…

Under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, fishing and trading sharks are punishable only when it comes to four species: the whale shark, Pondicherry shark, Ganges river shark and the speartooth shark… Many conservationists argue that more shark species need to be brought under protection, and that the Wildlife Protection Act list needs a review…

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, a treaty between 185 countries, liststen varieties of sharks under its protection list, some of them commercially exploited in Indian waters. While India is a signatory to the CITES convention, only one of these species, the whale shark, is protected under Indian law. Thus, shark fishing is legal in India for now, barring the few protected species. Cutting and processing fins, transportation, and selling shark fins within the country are also entirely legal.

But in 2013, the government determined that there was a need to protect the animal from exploitation and introduced a policy banning finning – the practice of catching a shark, extracting all its fins and throwing the shark back into the ocean to die. According to this policy, if a shark is fished, it has to be landed whole, with its fins naturally attached to its bodies. This is intended to ensure that sharks are not overfished solely to meet the demand for fins.

This was followed in 2015 by the ban on export of fins, upheld by a number of rulings of the High Courts of Kerala and Madras. But, as the 2018 seizure showed, these measures did not shut down the fin trade. Other seizures have indicated this too. In 2017, for instance, Hong Kong officials seized an Indian consignment of 450 kg dried fins of oceanic white-tip sharks…

There is also evidence of the thriving fin trade online. In an online search, we came across several India-based firms still advertising on business-to-business portals, offering to export shark fins. Further, the 2015 FAO report mentions consistent under-reporting of fin exports by up to 50% by Indian exporters. Another 2004 study looked at India’s shark landing data – based on the fact that India exports almost all the shark fins it produces, it concluded that fin exports were 2.24 times greater than export data indicated. SOURCE…

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