Shark finning — removing fins and discarding living sharks at sea — causes extreme suffering and has driven many shark species to endangerment; alternatives and bans are progressing globally.
Shark finning represents one of the most acute welfare abuses in marine fisheries. Finned sharks are dumped overboard alive but unable to swim, sinking to suffocate and die slowly on the seafloor. This practice serves purely economic convenience — fins are more valuable by weight than shark meat, and finning maximizes cargo value. The welfare cost is extreme, prolonged, and entirely avoidable through fins-attached regulations that require sharks to be landed whole. Beyond finning, bycatch and targeted shark fisheries cause additional welfare harms at enormous scale.