Conservation Group to Regulate Shark 'Fin' Trading, Adds 5 Shark Species to Protected List

Delegates at an internal conservationist meeting in Bangkok this week have voted to clamp down on the shark trade used primarily for the infamous shark fin soup popular in Asia, and added five shark species to a protected list in efforts to save them from being wiped out by overfishing.

The 178-member Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted to place the oceanic whitetip, the porbeagle, three types of hammerheads and two types manta ray on its Appendix II list, which places restrictions on fishing, but still allows limited trade.

China and Japan opposed the addition of the sharks to the CITES list. Shark population is better left to the oversight of regional fishing management groups, the two nations argued, according to the Associated Press.

Scientists estimate that almost 100 million sharks are caught each year and since they are slow growing and slow to reproduce, they are especially vulnerable to overfishing,  The Independent reports. The shark fin business is worth an estimated $475 million a year. The UN says 90 per cent of the world's sharks have disappeared in the past 100 years. 

Conservationists warn that sharks are slow to reproduce, with some sharks even having a gestation period lasting up two years, and may become threatened with extinction if they are not  better monitored and protected.

"During their lifetimes they have relatively few offspring and they only start reproducing at a relatively late age - they're more like mammals in many ways than fish," said Colman O'Criodain, an expert with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Ninety percent of the world's sharks have disappeared over the past 100 years, mostly because of overfishing in countries such as Indonesia, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and conservationists are warning that dozens of species are under threat.

The rise of shark fishing has correlated with the rise of China's swelling middle class. Shark fin soup was once a luxury for China's elite, but it has now been incorporated it into their regular festivities, including weddings. A delegate from one of the world's top fin-exporting nations whose name was not given, said that putting an end to shark fin soup demand will be much harder than imagined. "It would be like telling the French not to have champagne at their wedding," she said, according to the Guardian.