At the industry’s heart in Sheung Wan, shark fin is easy to get your hands on. But in other parts of the world, there are moves afoot to outlaw this controversial trade. Earlier this month, the Californian Legislature passed a bill to ban the trade and possession of shark fins, joining Hawaii, Oregon and Washington as the fourth American state to enact such a law. Around the same time, the Toronto City Council also voted to support a similar ban. Both California and Toronto have large Asian populations. And now, local environmental groups are urging Hong Kong, the world’s largest importer of shark fins and believed to handle at least half the global trade, to follow this trend.

The major justification behind the ban is the horrific, wasteful and often illegal methods utilised in shark finning. The shark finning practice involves the fins, the most profitable part of a shark, being cut off while at sea, with the remainder of the shark thrown back into the water, making it almost impossible for it to survive. According to international environmental group Oceana, in 2008, nearly 10,000 tons of shark fins were imported in Hong Kong, with up to 73 million sharks killed each year to satisfy the international demand for this high-priced delicacy.
 
“Banning the trade of shark fins in Hong Kong is the most effective way to protect sharks,” says Silvy Pun Yuen-yiu, marketing officer of WWF Hong Kong, referring to the city’s magnitude in the global market of shark fins. “A small step we take will mean a lot to the whole world.” Pun says it takes one to two years for sharks to reproduce and around 10 years for babies to mature, which cannot compare to the rate of them being killed. “Sharks play an important role in the oceans. If they disappeared, the ecosystem of the oceans would be greatly affected or even collapse.”

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