Shark Fin Trade Bans: Which Countries Say No to Shark Fin Soup

Imagine you are a guest at a big wedding banquet. The dishes keep arriving, and then a special bowl is placed in front of you. Everyone at the table knows it is meant as an honour. It is shark fin soup.

What would you do? First, the short answer to the question in the title. The United States, Canada and the European Union all restrict the shark fin trade in some way, but only some of them ban the trade itself, and the rules are different in each place. Before deciding what to do with the bowl, it helps to know what these laws really say, and what they leave out.

A dish about status, and a question about sharks

Shark fin soup is not an everyday meal. It is traditionally a celebration dish, and that is exactly why it is hard to refuse: saying no can feel like refusing the host, not the soup. I understand that. A table is about generosity and respect. This article is not here to shame anyone who grew up with this tradition. It is here to lay out the facts, so each of us can choose with clear eyes.

What I share comes from fisheries science and from the laws themselves, and I will say clearly where the evidence is uncertain.

How many sharks are we talking about?

You will often read that tens of millions of sharks die for their fins every year. The most careful global estimate I found is a 2013 study in the journal Marine Policy by Boris Worm and colleagues. They estimated that around 100 million sharks were killed in 2000 and about 97 million in 2010, from all causes together: targeted fishing, bycatch, discards and finning. The possible range is wide, between 63 and 273 million sharks a year. The authors have said the figure describes all fishing deaths, not only sharks killed for fins. So the honest version is this: fins are one part of a much larger pattern of overfishing, and nobody knows the exact share.

The picture for the animals themselves is clearer. In 2021, a reassessment of sharks, rays and chimaeras for the IUCN Red List, published by Nicholas Dulvy and colleagues in Current Biology, found that 391 of 1,199 assessed species (32.6%) are threatened with extinction. When the same share is applied to species with too little data, the estimate rises to 37.5%, more than a third. Rays are the most threatened group. Overfishing is the one threat that touches all 391 threatened species, and for about two thirds of them it is the only threat. The authors also flagged three species as possibly extinct, which would be among the first global marine fish extinctions caused by overfishing.

The countries that have said no

In the United States, the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act took effect on 23 December 2022. According to NOAA Fisheries, it prohibits possessing, transporting and selling shark fins, with narrow exceptions, and NOAA says there are no exceptions for commercial purposes. Fishers can still land and sell whole sharks with the fins naturally attached. NOAA also lists an exemption for smooth and spiny dogfish, so if you need the exact wording for work, please read the agency’s FAQ rather than a summary like mine.

Canada banned the import and export of shark fins in June 2019, through changes to its Fisheries Act, and was described at the time as the first G20 country to do so. Finning in Canadian waters had been illegal since 1994, but importing fins was still legal. Imports were already falling: in 2018 Canada imported fins worth about 3.24 million Canadian dollars, mostly from Hong Kong and mainland China, around 1.9% of reported world imports.

The European Union sits in the middle. Since Regulation (EU) 605/2013, sharks must be landed with their fins naturally attached, which makes finning much harder to hide. But that rule is about landing, not selling. A citizens’ initiative called “Stop finning, stop the trade” asked for a ban on the trade in loose fins. The Commission answered by promising to examine a legislative measure, to run an impact assessment and to improve trade statistics, with 13 new customs codes for sharks and fins from January 2025. Its public consultation received 3,455 replies. I could not confirm what has been decided since then, so please check the Commission’s current position before quoting it.

At a global level, the parties to CITES, the convention on trade in wild species, voted at their 2022 meeting in Panama to list requiem sharks and hammerhead sharks in Appendix II. That means international trade needs permits and must be shown to be sustainable. The proposal covered 54 species, and it was not simple: some countries and scientific advisers disagreed about the evidence for some look-alike species. If you want to check one species, the official CITES listings are the place.

Why a ban on the trade matters more than a ban on the practice

This is the detail that is easy to miss. Fins are small, light and valuable, so they travel easily. A rule that only controls how sharks are caught in one country does not control what is sold in the shops of another. That is why conservation groups argue that finning bans alone are not enough, and why the discussion in Europe is about the sale of loose fins, not only about the boats.

None of this is simple, and I want to be fair. Fins are only one part of shark fishing, and some governments argue that well-managed fisheries can be sustainable. The science says the real problem is how many sharks are taken and how fast they can recover, because sharks grow slowly and have few young. Worm and colleagues found that the sharks they studied could rebuild at about 4.9% a year on average, while about 6.4 to 7.9% were being killed each year. That gap is why the declines go on.

Why this reaches the reefs we love

This is not only a story about faraway boats. Sharks help keep ocean ecosystems in balance, and travellers meet them on reefs all over the world. If you want to see how a healthy reef population lives, our story about the reef shark social network in Moʻorea is a lovely place to start. Our piece on how tourism can protect sharks looks at the other side: when watching a living shark is worth more than selling a dead one.

When we snorkel above blacktip sharks in a lagoon, we are looking at a healthier system than one where the sharks have gone. Every shark that stays in the sea is part of that picture. We also take a careful position on how people meet sharks: no baiting, no touching, local rules first. If you are curious about the evidence, we wrote about what the research on baited shark dives really shows.

How to politely decline shark fin soup

If the bowl arrives at a banquet, you do not need a speech. A smile, a hand gently over the bowl and a simple “no, thank you, but I am so happy to be here” is enough.

When you travel, skip souvenirs made from shark products, and ask restaurants what is in a dish if the menu is unclear. When you want to meet sharks, choose encounters that keep them wild. A snorkel trip can be very simple: a well-fitting low-volume mask and snorkel, a quiet float at the surface, and patience. A mineral sunscreen from a list like this mineral sunscreen selection and a long-sleeved rash guard mean less lotion in the water. The shark decides if it comes closer, and that is exactly how it should be. Wildlife encounters are unpredictable. Snorkelling near sharks should always follow local regulations and experienced professional guidance.

If this made you curious about experiencing it yourself, you can explore our Moʻorea retreat in September 2027, a small hosted group where we watch reef sharks from the surface and never feed or touch them.

Questions people ask

Wildlife encounters are never guaranteed and never forced. Ocean Calling works only with vetted, ethical local operators, and every animal is free to approach, or not, entirely on its own terms.