As more North American states ban shark fins, Shirley Zhao explores what such a move might mean for the Hong Kong market

Along Sheung Wan’s Des Voeux Road West, the potent aroma is unmistakable. It’s that of dried seafood – one of the most traditional of Hong Kong industries – and it wafts over much of the Western District from more than 200 shops selling dried and salted fish, flattened squid, oysters, scallops, abalone, fish maw and more. But there’s one product that sticks out more than most: shark fins, preserved in large glass jars and tagged with price tags soaring well above $1,000.

At the industry’s heart in Sheung Wan, shark fin is easy to get your hands on. But in other parts of the world, there are moves afoot to outlaw this controversial trade. Earlier this month, the Californian Legislature passed a bill to ban the trade and possession of shark fins, joining Hawaii, Oregon and Washington as the fourth American state to enact such a law. Around the same time, the Toronto City Council also voted to support a similar ban. Both California and Toronto have large Asian populations. And now, local environmental groups are urging Hong Kong, the world’s largest importer of shark fins and believed to handle at least half the global trade, to follow this trend.

The major justification behind the ban is the horrific, wasteful and often illegal methods utilised in shark finning. The shark finning practice involves the fins, the most profitable part of a shark, being cut off while at sea, with the remainder of the shark thrown back into the water, making it almost impossible for it to survive. According to international environmental group Oceana, in 2008, nearly 10,000 tons of shark fins were imported in Hong Kong, with up to 73 million sharks killed each year to satisfy the international demand for this high-priced delicacy.
“Banning the trade of shark fins in Hong Kong is the most effective way to protect sharks,” says Silvy Pun Yuen-yiu, marketing officer of WWF Hong Kong, referring to the city’s magnitude in the global market of shark fins. “A small step we take will mean a lot to the whole world.” Pun says it takes one to two years for sharks to reproduce and around 10 years for babies to mature, which cannot compare to the rate of them being killed. “Sharks play an important role in the oceans. If they disappeared, the ecosystem of the oceans would be greatly affected or even collapse.”

Bertha Lo Ka-yan, the project director of Hong Kong Shark Foundation, says judging by the current speed of consumption of shark fins, sharks could be extinct in 10 years. Says Lo: “The government should ban the trade of shark fins. If depending only on common people, it will be difficult and will take a long time to make any difference.”

But banning shark fins in Hong Kong would be a significant blow to local shark-fin traders. Calling the four American states and Toronto ‘a very few irrational societies’, Ricky Leung, a committee member of Hong Kong Marine Products Import and Export Association, says he doesn’t understand their decisions. “I’ve been in this industry for so many years. I know very well that sharks are limitless to catch. I’m very confident that there are enough shark to keep supply for a long time,” he says. “The trade of shark fins should not be banned all over the world. Shark meat, shark bones, medicine and cosmetics made of shark oil and purses made of shark skin are popular globally. Why do they only ban shark fins?”

Leung says local shark-fin traders are practising according to the international agreement, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), where only three species of sharks – namely basking shark, great white shark and whale shark – are included as endangered. CITES suggests that the trade of these species should be tightly controlled, while the rest of the species can be traded freely.

But Pun argues that although CITES only includes three endangered species of sharks, on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s red list of threatened species, the species of sharks increased from 15 in 1996 to 181 last year.

Daniel Chui Tak-yiu, the executive director of Fook Lam Moon, a local restaurant known for its shark-fin cuisines, doubts if shark finning is really a common practice. His reason is that sharks are not easy to catch, and many parts can be sold to make good profit, so it is unlikely that the fishers would waste the sharks.

Chui says even if Hong Kong banned shark fins, it still would not help much, because the Mainland is the biggest consumer of shark fins, and the whole shark-fin business could go underground, or Macau could take the place of Hong Kong as the trade centre. Indeed, with the rapid economic growth in mainland China, its demand for shark fins has also been growing rapidly. Statistics show that about 80 percent of shark fins in Hong Kong are exported to the Mainland.

The upsetting thing, according to Chui, is that many HK fast food restaurants are serving shark fins from dogfish sharks, the prices of which are relatively low. “That’s not good to the environment,” he says. He suggests that the government can set a quota of the amount of imported shark fins and a license and tracking system, where buyers and sellers of shark fins need to register to trade, so the related costs and the subsequent prices would increase and there would be less people willing to buy shark fins or such dishes.

Surprisingly, even though opposing the ban of shark fins in Hong Kong, many local seafood retailers on Des Voeux Road West admit that it would not affect their business much. Lee Wong-lung, one of the retailers, told Time Out that the money he earned from selling shark fins only accounts for 10 percent of his total earning.

Hong Kong’s traditional demand for shark fins is undoubtedly the major reason why a ban would be a controversial step. Stephanie Cheng Wing-man is going to have her wedding banquet at the end of next year. She says she would like to have a menu without shark fin dishes because she is strongly influenced by photos and video clips online showing the cruelty of the finning practices – but when she came to choosing the menu for the banquet with her parents, they insisted that she used a traditional one. “I chose the one with shark fins in the end,” she says. “They think a menu with shark fins is more decent. It was not a big deal. I didn’t want to argue with them on this.”

According to a recent survey released by non-governmental organisation Bloom, almost 90 percent of a total of 1,000 people interviewed attended banquets with shark fins, but nearly 80 percent of them would like to accept wedding banquets without those dishes.

According to WWF Hong Kong, there are 107 organisations pledging not to sell or buy shark fin soup in any activities, and 26 restaurants and hotels provide alternative banquet menus.

“There is definitely a growing trend amongst environmentally-aware young couples to seek an alternative menu for their wedding banquets,” says Shane Pateman, general manager of Eaton Smart Hong Kong hotel, one of the 26.

Pateman says the hotel will not stop serving shark fins because although it wishes to promote the awareness of protecting sharks, shark-fin soup is a long-time tradition in Chinese banqueting, and the hotel respects the choice of its customers. “We have limited shark-fin soup to our Chinese restaurant and Chinese banquet menus only,” he says.

L’hotel Island South, meanwhile, hasn’t provided shark dishes since its opening last year. According to communications manager, Karen Wong Ka-yan, the hotel targets young people who always follow the trend. “We support environmental protection and want to set the first step. Our customers are satisfied too. There were customers who required menus with shark fins, but after we explained our idea, they changed their minds after all.”