Shark finning involves removing fins from live sharks and returning the still-living animal to the sea to drown. The practice causes severe suffering and has decimated shark populations globally.
Shark finning is one of the most straightforwardly cruel practices in commercial fishing. Removing fins from a living, conscious animal and returning it to the water to die slowly is not a side effect of finning — it is the practice itself. The suffering involved — paralysis, suffocation, predation of a helpless animal — is prolonged and severe. The scale of the practice, affecting tens of millions of animals annually, makes it one of the largest sources of deliberate acute suffering inflicted on wild marine animals. The demand driving this suffering is primarily cultural — shark fin soup as a luxury status dish — making consumer behavior change and social norm shifting among the most effective available interventions.