Just in Time for Shark Week, Brazilian Seafood Exporter Busted for Finning

Sharks may be making many appearances on the Discovery Channel this week, but there's one place where the fish are rapidly disappearing — the world's oceans. About 100 million sharks die every year from legal and illegal fishing. The practice has become so rampant that some species are swimming towards extinction—some shark populations have plummeted by as much as 99 percent.

A seafood exporter in Brazil is the latest organization to fall into that illegal fishing category. According to a BBC story, officials from Brazil's environment ministry raided the exporter's premises in May, discovering thousands of undocumented shark fins. Finning involves cutting off sharks' fins, then throwing the bodies back into the ocean to die. You can bet Siglo do Brasil Comercio's sharks weren't just illegally harvested, they were brutally killed.

It's too late to get those sharks back into the ocean where they belong, but one organization aims to get reparations. The Brazil Environmental Justice Institute recently said it will sue Siglo Do Brasil for illegally killing nearly 300,000 sharks and damaging marine ecosystems. "As we can't put a value on life, we have calculated the impact on the ecosystem," Brazil Environmental Justice Institute's director, Cristiano Pacheco, told the BBC. The value of that impact: $790 million.

It's great that the Brazil Environmental Justice Institute is standing up to an unscrupulous seafood purveyor, but unfortunately, its not the only exporter devastating global shark populations. Siglo do Brasil Comercio's shark fins were destined for Asia, where they'll most likely be cooked into the increasingly popular shark fin soup. Back in the day, only Asia's uppermost echelon of society dined on shark fin soup. But as the Chinese middle class continues to grow exponentially, so does the country's appetite for this fancy dish. Eating shark fin soup is seen not just as a dining experience in China — it's seen as a cultural status symbol, and everyone wants a bite.

Sharks aren't the only fish struggling to survive against a growing global appetite for them. Fish like bluefin tuna, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy, monkfish, and several others face rapidly depleting population numbers. Though it's illegal to fin shark in Brazil — just as it's illegal to harvest some of these other fish beyond certain catch limits — seafood exporters still pay top dollar for black market meat.

Luckily, consumers can fight back using their wallets, forks, and knives. Diners can decrease demand for threatened fish species by simply refusing to eat them. But more than that, shoppers can help improve the state of the world's oceans by telling companies and seafood distributors to adopt transparent sustainable seafood policies.

Greenpeace is one organization that's taking supermarkets to task to implement ethical and environmental seafood programs. Through its Oh-No-Costco campaign, the non-profit is trying to get Costco to develop a comprehensive sustainable seafood program, beginning with immediately halting the sale of orange roughy and Chilean sea bass in its stores. Sign onto Greenpeace's petition, and help keep threatened fish out of nets and in the ocean.

Photo credit: hermanusbackpackers via Flickr