Great White Sharks: Welfare Impacts of Finning and Bycatch

Great white sharks face significant welfare threats from targeted finning, recreational fishing, and incidental bycatch, raising questions about pain and suffering in one of the ocean's most iconic predators.

Key Facts

Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with populations declining due to targeted fishing and bycatch.
Shark finning — removing fins and discarding the living body at sea — results in a slow death by drowning or predation; the practice is banned in many but not all jurisdictions.
Great whites are protected in territorial waters of the US, Australia, South Africa, and several other nations, but lack protection on the high seas.
As obligate ram ventilators, great whites must keep moving to pass water over their gills; immobilization during capture causes rapid physiological stress and oxygen debt.
Research on elasmobranch (shark and ray) pain perception indicates they possess nociceptors and respond physiologically and behaviorally to injurious stimuli.
Bycatch in longline, drift net, and trawl fisheries kills thousands of sharks annually as non-target species.
Population recovery is slow because great whites mature late (around 26 years) and produce few offspring; recovery from population depletion takes decades.

Welfare Considerations

The welfare implications of shark fishing and finning are significant, though scientific understanding of shark sentience remains less complete than for mammals or birds. Evidence increasingly supports that sharks experience nociception — the neural processing of harmful stimuli — and likely experience something analogous to pain. Finning, in particular, inflicts severe injury followed by prolonged dying: a finned shark, unable to swim effectively, sinks to the bottom and slowly suffocates or is consumed alive. Bycatch individuals may experience prolonged stress, injury, and air exposure before release or death. For great whites specifically, the combined pressures of targeted fishing, bycatch, and environmental change threaten both individual welfare and population viability across their range.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood certified by programs that use shark-safe fishing practices and minimize bycatch.
Support organizations working for international shark finning bans and high-seas protection.
Advocate for expansion of shark sanctuaries in territorial waters and inclusion in regional fisheries management.
Learn about shark sensory biology and the growing evidence for fish and elasmobranch sentience.
Avoid purchasing shark fin soup or shark-derived products that drive demand for finning.