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While the shark fin trade has evolved into a global enterprise, spanning multiple oceans and continents, at one point or another it almost always stops here, in a warren of narrow Hong Kong streets that make up two neighborhoods, Sai Ying Poon and Sheung Wan. It’s hard not to be impressed with the sheer variety of parched delicacies on display: seaweed, scallops, and oysters, all spilling out into the street. Auction houses have glass doors that keep their commodities out of the reach of ordinary customers, but these stores don’t have the same rarefied rules. A nutty, slightly cloying scent pervades the entire neighborhood: the smell of the sea, withered up and left to die.
Roughly half of the world’s shark fins move through Hong Kong, which serves as a gateway for both the mainland Chinese market and other Asian countries that consume shark’s fin soup. Tracking the shark fin trade in recent years has become increasingly complicated as mainland China has started playing a bigger role in directly receiving fin imports from overseas, rather than using Hong Kong as an intermediary. In 2000, the five major markets for shark fins—Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore—reported importing 11,600 metric tons of fins, of which Hong Kong accounted for 47 percent. The numbers keep rising: in 2008, Hong Kong alone imported 10,002 metric tons of fins.2 But as China’s role as an importer of raw shark fins has grown, it’s become harder to track the overall trade because Chinese government figures are so unreliable.
For example, the shark fin trade increased at a steady clip of 5 percent a year during the late 1990s and early twenty-first century (with the exception of 1998, when the Asian financial crisis depressed sales). But in recent years Hong Kong imports have dipped slightly, clocking in at 5,337 metric tons in 2006. This is due in part to the fin trade shifting to other cities in China, but it’s hard to gauge what’s happening there. Shelley Clarke, a biology professor at Imperial College London who knows the shark fin trade better than most people on earth, says China underestimates its fin imports by anywhere from 24 to 49 percent.3
Clarke has made a career of studying shark fin trading. While she doesn’t blend in with the crowd in Sai Ying Poon—she is British, with fair skin and strawberry blond hair—Clarke has lived in Asia for more than a dozen years, and is fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese. As a graduate student, she made it her mission to infiltrate shark trade auctions, to get a sense of which types of sharks ended up on the chopping block, since traders use names that are not strict translations and often correlate to, but are not identical with, certain species. (Basking shark falls into the “Nuo Wei Tian Jiu” fin category, for example, but it’s not the Mandarin term for that species.) To ferret out these distinctions, Clarke—working with Mahmood Shivji, a Nova Southeastern University professor, and Ellen Pikitch, executive director of Stony Brook University’s Institute for Ocean Conservation Science—used DNA analysis to figure out which species were being traded and then used mathematical formulas to get a sense of how many sharks are killed overall and sold each year for their fins.
Their conclusion: 73 million sharks are being caught and killed worldwide each year to supply the fin trade. And regardless of modest market shifts, Hong Kong remains the center of the global shark fin trade. The majority of shark fins come in by boat, though a small portion come in by plane: in 2006 a grand total of eighty-four countries shipped fins here, and by 2008 the number of nations had risen to eighty-seven. While the order shifts from time to time, the list of countries bringing fins to Hong Kong remains pretty much the same, with Spain, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates topping the list. The United States used to rank relatively high until President Bill Clinton, facing little political resistance, established a shark-finning ban off America’s coasts at the end of his term in office.
The shark fin trade encompasses anywhere from thirty to forty different kinds of sharks at any given time, though the Hong Kong market tends to focus on about fourteen species, ranging from blue shark to scalloped hammerhead. Still, it’s size rather than species that matters when it comes to price. Shark fins can sell for $880 per pound or more on the Hong Kong market, and a single fin from a basking shark—the second-largest fish in the world—sold in Singapore in 2003 for $57,000 (all values throughout are in U.S. dollars).
While several species, like the great white, whale, and basking sharks, are prized for their immensity, it’s the fish nicknamed “the rabbit of the sea” that keeps the fin market humming. Blue sharks are the workhorses, the ones that reproduce regularly and aren’t about to chew the fishermen who catch them into little bits. They make up at least 17 percent of the international shark fin trade, according to Clarke and Shivji, which means at least 10.7 million blue sharks—which fishermen from Mexico to Indonesia pull ashore—are killed annually. When you match those numbers with the stock assessments fishery experts have done of blue shark populations in the Atlantic and north Pacific, it comes close to those stocks’ “maximum sustainable yield.” And the fact that we’re taking as many blue sharks out of the sea each year as it can afford to give up worries Clarke, since, in her words, “any catch that approaches or exceeds this level is of concern.”
Fins arrive in Hong Kong because the place epitomizes trading. More than a decade after the United Kingdom relinquished its 155-year-old hold on Hong Kong and handed it to China as a “special administrative region,” this 426-square-mile territory of roughly seven million people still excels at buying and selling goods. (Ten years after the handover, it had a higher per capita gross domestic product than Europe’s four biggest economies, as well as Japan’s.) At times the major islands that make up Hong Kong resemble different versions of the same mall, with air-conditioning blasting from shops into the streets and brightly colored neon signs touting different products with unbridled enthusiasm.
Decades ago, when Hong Kongers were more focused on producing goods rather than just passing them along, they used to hunt sharks. As far back as 1940, one Hong Kong resident named S. Y. Lin reported, “Sharks are plentiful, sharks are everywhere,” and by the 1960s a specific fishery aimed at catching sharks had started booming here. Shark slaying was never a prestigious occupation: most fishermen belonged to a social caste called the Hokklos, hailing from China’s Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Treated like social outsiders, Hokklos remain segregated today in Hong Kong society and can occasionally be spotted walking the streets in hobo-like clothing.
As overfishing depleted Hong Kong’s local shark populations, its fishery went bust in the 1980s. But that only marked the beginning of the ascent of Hong Kong’s shark fin market. The island’s unique status in China made it the perfect place to traffic in shark fins. Under “one country, two systems,” which governs China’s relationship with Hong Kong, the former British colony is allowed to continue its particular brand of capitalism: bringing things in and shipping them out without imposing heavy tariffs.
If anyone is in charge of the shark fins coming into and out of Hong Kong, it’s Cheung Chi-sun, who serves as senior endangered species protection officer for Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department. Cheung is an elegant, kindly bureaucrat who has worked in the department for more than two decades. He attends international conferences like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which is held every three years, and he compiles plenty of statistics about the comings and goings of shark fins in his corner of the world. But he doesn’t do much about it: his agency simply charges an administrative fee that amounts to about eighty cents per shipment of fins.
“In general, there’s no control,” Cheung explains to me as we sit in his cramped government office. “It all depends on how you see these kinds of things. Some people will say all things should be protected, and the government should regulate these things. On the other side, there is the argument for free trade.”
Cheung and the Hong Kong government side with the free traders. “Fisheries in Hong Kong is not an important busi
ness,” he continues. “Hong Kong is basically a very commercial, or financial, city.” And when it comes to preserving sharks, he adds, “it’s not a single country’s responsibility; it’s a global responsibility.”
All the same, Cheung sees the identical numbers that Shelley Clarke does, and as he nears retirement, he’s beginning to wonder if the boxes of fins moving through Hong Kong indicate a problem. Cheung envisions a world of “sustainable trade,” where the sharks that fishermen take out of the sea each year are replaced through natural births. Whether that’s happening, he says, “we really don’t know. I must admit the volume of trade is really alarming … For thousands of years people are using natural resources for human benefit. The problem is people are using too much, so there may not be enough for the next generation.”
While Cheung and others envision a world in which a moderate, regulated shark trade could thrive, this is an illusion. With a handful of possible exceptions, sharks cannot be harvested sustainably because they cannot reproduce rapidly enough to offset these human-induced losses. A sustainable shark fishery is as unrealistic as reasonable bald eagle hunting.
Several decades ago the world made a decision it was no longer acceptable to hunt whales, and in 1986 the international whaling moratorium took effect. Three countries have defied the ban over the years—Japan, Norway, and Iceland—along with a handful of aboriginal groups who were exempted from the moratorium at the outset. In each case, these societies argue whaling represents such a strong cultural tradition they should not have to abandon it altogether. The same arguments can be applied to sharks, of course. But for the most part the international community has rejected this line of reasoning, concluding that there are some marine animal populations that humanity has depleted to such an extent that they need extraordinary new protections if they are to survive. It is hard to make these policy decisions when the answer involves absolutes and there is no obvious compromise. But in certain instances, science gives us no other alternatives.
On a hot, humid evening in July, my friend Candice To and I make our way down Hong Kong’s Hennessy Road to grab a bite to eat. Candice and I are searching for seafood, and we find it in Tanyoto restaurant, an impressive-looking, multistoried establishment that overlooks the busy thoroughfare.
While different parts of sharks’ bodies can serve different purposes, depending on cultures and regions of the world, shark fin has just one purpose: to make soup. Since so much of sharks’ current predicament stems from the rising demand for shark’s fin soup, I want to taste it for myself, and this seems like as good a place as any. The dining room is draped in sparkling white Christmas lights, and the wait-staff displays the kind of intense efficiency I’ve come to associate with Hong Kong. Our server sports a black suit and has an elaborate piece of technology firmly attached to his ear, reminiscent of what a Secret Service agent would wear.
While I had heard of shark’s fin soup costing enormous sums—$100 or more for a bowl that serves four people—Tanyoto’s version seems like a bargain, at just $10 for a single serving. Within minutes our waiter brings a small, covered ceramic bowl to our table and sets it down, barking into his earpiece the entire time. He removes the cover with great fanfare, for my inspection. This is the famed yu chi, or fish wing, soup, which started in southern China but has now spread to every Asian outpost in the world.
I stare down at the concoction, which resembles a traditional noodle soup with seafood thrown in: a golden broth suspending items ranging from small prawns to unidentified circular objects. It looks perfectly attractive, but not extraordinary.
Candice dips her chopsticks into the bowl, digging for some elusive target. “Here it is, no, here, here I’ve found it,” she declares, capturing a tiny, gelatinous string that measures an inch at most.
“That’s shark fin?” I ask, incredulous. “You’re kidding me.”
“No, no, that’s it,” Candice replies.
I have found one of the primary sources of our global fishing frenzy. It is a translucent, tasteless bit of noodle, known in scientific terms as ceratotrichia, that fans out to support the fin in any given shark. This is the moment that I come face-to-face with shark’s fin soup’s amazing secret: it is one of the greatest scams of all time, an emblem of status whose most essential ingredient adds nothing of material value to the end product.
There are plenty of tasty but morally objectionable food items on the market: foie gras, which requires farmers to force-feed geese repeatedly; veal, which entails raising baby calves in cramped conditions before killing them; and fatty bluefin tuna, whose populations have been devastated in recent years as fishermen have sought to satisfy the upscale sushi market’s considerable demand. While critics can make a strong argument for why these practices should be abolished—cities like Chicago have even banned the sale of foie gras on the grounds that the process of making it is too cruel to be tolerated—even they would acknowledge this suffering yields a gastronomic payoff. This is not the case with shark fin, which could be replaced with a plain rice noodle at a moment’s notice.
This is the most stunning aspect of the entire economic empire that has arisen around shark’s fin soup: it is, to be blunt, a food product with no culinary value whatsoever. It is all symbol, no substance. Throughout my time in Hong Kong, I asked whether a noodle substitute, which could feature the same stringy texture and lack of taste, would succeed in the marketplace. No one, not even the most ardent environmental activists, seemed willing to entertain this idea. It would be deceptive, they reasoned, to coax consumers into eating a shark’s fin soup devoid of its central ingredient. Millions of people who scarf down California sushi rolls with fake crabmeat do not seem to have a problem with seafood-product substitution, but for some reason restaurateurs and conservationists alike are worried about asking shark’s fin soup eaters to make the same sort of swap. Since the central premise behind shark’s fin soup rests on the act of killing the shark itself, rather than the pleasure in eating it, there’s no way to save the animal and still preserve the value of its namesake dish.
The people who produce shark’s fin soup don’t pretend this ingredient adds anything substantive to their product. One afternoon I am lucky enough to get an exclusive crash course in the making of shark’s fin soup, and I can testify that shark fins are the least important part of the recipe.
Norman Ho is director of the Coral Seafood Restaurant on Des Voeux Road, in the heart of Hong Kong’s dried-seafood district. He’s an interior decorator by trade, having run a restaurant for two years in the late 1970s before switching over to decorating eating establishments full-time. In 2004 he took over the Coral Seafood Restaurant, a multistoried edifice he had once decorated.
Part of Ho’s business is shark’s fin soup. The restaurant’s mainstay is dim sum, which it serves every day. But the majority of the business’s income comes from the seafood and fish it serves, and shark’s fin soup alone makes up as much as 20 percent of the restaurant’s total take. During our talk Ho did some quick calculations in his head and realized that he serves 2,820 bowls a month of the stuff: a large bowl runs just under $80, with a small bowl costing a little more than $25. Ho is not particularly eager to peddle shark’s fin soup: it’s a hassle to make, and he says it’s not as big a profit maker as some might assume because it costs so much to prepare. “Being a seafood restaurant, we have to sell everything,” he explains. “It’s the customers’ request. If they have a wedding banquet, they order it. We don’t want to sell shark’s fin, but it’s the customers’ request.”
Ho’s problem is not that he’s worried about sharks—“You can take them for a long, long time,” he says—it’s the fact that making shark’s fin soup is an elaborate, costly process. He starts with the dried triangular fin that likely came into Hong Kong but was transported by barge on the Pearl River delta to Guangdong, China, where labor is cheaper and there are looser water pollution and sewage laws. It takes two to three days to process the fins, which are immersed in ho
t water before workers use a knife to remove the fin scales manually, along with the main bone. In the old days these fins would dry in the sun for a few days; now they’re shoved into an oven for a few hours. (Ho says he still prefers sun-dried fins: “I can tell whether a fin has been dried in an oven. It’s softer; a fin dried in sunlight will not bend.”) Some shark fins need to be plunged into hot water again for anywhere between three and eight hours after the oven treatment, while others do not. The cream-colored fins Ho imports resemble massive feathers or quills, with one very smooth side. They smell vaguely fishlike, but in a nonoffensive way, and the price they fetch varies based on what sort of fin they are. Pectoral fins produce the most membrane-like “needles,” as they’re called, while dorsal and triangular fins offer up a more modest yield, making them less valuable.
Once the fins arrive, Coral Seafood Restaurant workers put the fins in cold tap water for half a day to soften them and then transfer them to hot water with ginger and spring onions to boil them. At this point the shark fin and the needles will be tender, and kitchen workers will soak them in tap water for four more hours. The entire preparation amounts to a winnowing process, leaving an end product that is just 30 percent the weight of the original fin. At that point the fin and the needles can be boiled for six to eight hours with chicken stock and Chinese ham to produce shark’s fin soup’s base: cooks will throw in plenty of meat, ham, chicken, and pork to add flavor, because Ho knows the same thing I discovered during my shark’s fin soup tasting. “There’s no taste,” he says flatly. “All the taste comes from the soup. You have to put the shark fin and the soup together … To serve the shark’s fin soup is more or less status.” The power of shark’s fin soup to convey status on those who consume it is enormous, and it pervades Chinese society. A coterie of interests have helped cultivate the delicacy’s elevated status, from popular restaurants to wedding planners. While serving shark’s fin soup at nuptials has been a tradition for many years among elites, the Chinese bridal industry has turned it into an essential element of any middle-class wedding. As China’s economy expands, this means more and more wedding parties are putting it on the menu. Priscilla Chang, who works at Moon Love Wedding Planner & Production, makes sure that every one of her clients adds it to the list for their wedding day. “For people who attend the wedding, their friends and relatives, to judge whether the banquet is good, they’ll look at the fish and the shark fin,” Chang explains.
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