The Shark Finning Crisis: Why 100 Million Sharks Are Killed Every Year

Every year, more than 100 million sharks are killed across the globe. The majority are not hunted for meat or sustenance but for their fins.

In a practice known as shark finning, sharks are caught, their fins sliced off, and then they’re thrown back into the ocean. Alive. Unable to swim or breathe, they slowly sink to the bottom and die. It’s one of the most brutal and wasteful practices in modern fishing.

The demand is driven largely by the shark fin soup industry. And the result? Catastrophic declines. Oceanic whitetips, hammerheads, and threshers have dropped by more than 70%, with some regional populations collapsing entirely.

Sharks are keystone predators, and their presence keeps marine food webs in balance. When shark populations decline, the entire ocean ecosystem suffers—coral reefs degrade, fish populations explode or vanish, and biodiversity is lost.

Without sharks, there is no healthy ocean.