Welfare considerations for wild sharks, including the suffering caused by finning, longline bycatch, and how conservation and welfare goals align for elasmobranchs.
Wild shark welfare involves both acute suffering from fishing practices and the longer-term welfare implications of population collapse. The practice of finning — in which fins are cut from live sharks and the still-living animal thrown back to die — represents one of the most obvious welfare atrocities in marine fisheries, causing prolonged drowning and bleeding death in an animal that must keep moving to respire. Even where finning is prohibited, sharks caught as bycatch on longlines experience prolonged entanglement and exhaustion lasting hours to days before hauling, a time during which evidence suggests they experience physiological stress states consistent with pain and distress. The welfare argument for shark conservation therefore reinforces the conservation argument: protecting sharks from fishing pressure reduces both individual suffering and population-level decline. Marine protected areas, shark sanctuary designations, bycatch mitigation technology, and consumer campaigns against shark fin products all simultaneously serve welfare and conservation goals. The welfare of sharks challenges assumptions that fish-scale animals are beyond significant moral consideration — sharks are increasingly recognized as sentient animals worthy of welfare protection.