Uncovering the Shark Meat Trade
SHOW NOTES
The shark meat trade is a multi-billion dollar industry. But it receives relatively little attention, and remains understudied. This week, we sit down with conservation scientists Dr Divya Karnad and Dr Trisha Gupta, who have collaborated on research that aims to better understand the drivers and complexities of this trade. Using India as a case study, they are looking for ways to encourage more responsible and sustainable actions at all stages of the supply chain – from source to consumer.
Both Trisha and Divya grew up in India [8.15]. Sharks are a substantial part of Indian fisheries, and seeing sharks as part of the local catch was a regular occurrence. Later, while completing their respective degrees, both Trisha and Divya came to realise that not only were sharks commonly caught, consumed and sold, but they were also highly threatened. “I found myself at these landing sites where you throw a stone, and there are Critically Endangered species.” Says Divya. “And so there’s that kind of dichotomy between something being a part of the culture to eat, and also commercially important, but at the same time being Critically Endangered, with increasing attention being given to them as wildlife.” This is what drew them both into studying shark fisheries, from a socio-economic perspective. “[I wanted to look at] what kind of shark and ray species are caught in this region, how and why they are being caught, and how we can ultimately conserve these species while also working with local communities and considering their livelihoods.” Says Trisha.
Before we zoom in on India, let’s first look at the global perspective [9.55]. A few recent studies – one led by WWF, another by researchers at Dalhousie University – have revealed important, and surprising, insights into the global trade in shark meat. Namely, that the trade in shark meat could be as much as double the monetary value of the fin trade, and also surpasses the latter in terms of volume. “In volume, it’s going to be many times higher than the shark fin trade. Because the shark meat is usually much cheaper than shark fins are.” Explains Divya. There have been much-welcomed regulations placed on the international shark fin trade recently – could this be why? “I think there’s evidence of this in some places, but this shark meat trade is a bit more complex…other fisheries are declining, so the shark meat may be coming in as a substitute.” Another contributing factor may be the lack of attention the shark meat trade has received. Up until recently, a lot of focus has been placed upon shark finning – which was much needed, and regulations on this devastating practice have been welcomed by the scientific and conservation community. But it is just one driver of overfishing, the primary threat to sharks and rays.
Shark meat is consumed and traded all over the world, including the EU [18.03]. “I think there’s a common perception that this is something that only people in East Asia eat, or more in the Global South.” Trisha says. “But I think Spain and Portugal actually emerged as the top shark meat exporters globally, which is something people might be surprised to hear.” Spain is also one of the world’s biggest importers, alongside Brazil, Korea, and some countries in Africa, including Ghana. The trade also involves the US, the UK, and many other European countries. “It’s quite widespread.” Trisha continues. “Even shark scientists still have this belief that shark meat consumption is a thing only people in China do, or East Asia. It was quite surprising for me to hear this narrative even from other shark scientists, where there is clear data and evidence that it’s very much widespread across the globe.”
In many coastal areas, shark meat is culturally eaten, either fresh or dried [20.55]. But it is also sold increasingly in restaurants, as a delicacy. A significant problem is how shark meat is labelled – it can be labelled as the wrong species, or most often as a different kind of seafood altogether. This means it is very difficult to track, and shark meat can be found in a number of unexpected places. “Things like pet food, fish patties, those pre-packaged mixed seafood items.” Divya ticks the list off on her fingers. “That’s where we sort of get stuck with trying to understand what’s happening at the global scale, because it’s not transparent.”
For the last few years, Divya and Trisha have been trying to disentangle the shark meat trade in India [28.12]. One publication, led by Divya and published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, sought to identify regional hotspots and drivers of the trade across the country. “We were thinking about this project in around 2019, just before the pandemic…And then in India, we had like the super strict lockdowns for the pandemic where we couldn’t go out and do any field work or anything… I was wondering how one could approach looking at shark meat and this is when it struck me: the advantage we have in India is that we have a lot of online food websites and online delivery systems for food. And we could use those maybe as a potential way to look at who’s serving seafood and among the people serving seafood who’s serving shark meat and if it’s listed on menus.” With assistance from Trisha, they were able to speak to over 2,000 restaurants, gathering data on where shark meat was sold, and why. They found that two states really stood out – Goa, in the west, and Tamil Nadu, to the south. And the dynamics within these states were even more interesting.
“For most of [the restaurants], sharks were one of their most important items. How profitable a shark was to the restaurant really varied…but the common thing that did emerge is that sharks were commonly consumed in restaurants in Goa because they were commonly consumed by foreign tourists.” Trisha says [35.26]. Goa is a hotspot for tourism, visited by people from all over the world looking to try the local cuisine. “Personally, as a tourist who has been to Goa, I know that when I asked for something that was authentically Goan, I was immediately told to try the shark Ambot Tik.” Divya recalls. It appeared that tourists from outside India – from Russia, the EU and the UK – were driving the demand for shark meat in Goa. They wanted to eat something traditional, and kept returning to the same places for the same dishes.
So how do we begin to address sustainability issues within the shark meat trade [42.20]? Another paper, led by Trisha and published in Marine Policy, looks at where interventions might be best placed along the supply chain. She found that in different parts of India, the dynamics of the trade were quite different. “It basically started off with some of my previous PhD work in Goa where we discovered, as we’ve just talked about, there is this restaurant level consumption of shark meat and seemingly increasing demand for shark meat consumption within that region. And at the same time, we also discovered a bit of a seasonal targeted shark fishery that was operating in certain parts of Goa where it’s highly seasonal and they would go out and catch these juvenile black-tip sharks…I was also interested in looking at another site, just as a second comparative case study, which is why we then looked at a site on the east coast of India in Kakinada in the state of Andhra Pradesh, where there is a significant shark fishery that is known to operate in this region. It is also known to be quite a hub of shark fishing, shark trade, fin trade even and we’ve heard anecdotal information of it being or it having a large amount of regional shark consumption.” In comparing these two sites, Trisha discovered that interventions would have to target different parts of the supply chain, to target actors who had the most influence in those regions. In Goa, it was the small-scale fishers who had the highest negotiation power, as the fishery was very supply driven – the sharks were only caught seasonally, and during this time demand would be high. The fishers could choose who they sold it to, or at the very least, knew it would fetch a minimum price. In Kakinda however, fishers had much less access to the market and benefitted very little from the shark fishery. They had little choice over where their catch was sold. Rather, it was the wholesalers who decided where to buy from, where to sell it, and where was fetching the highest prices. “It did emerge that in that case, it’s more the wholesalers that we need to potentially work with, and also work towards increasing share of benefits for fishers because if they receive better prices for their catch, it might reduce the incentive to continue fishing for sharks at higher rates.” Explains Trisha.
Going back to Goa, where shark meat was sold in restaurants, interventions might also be targeted at another group: the restaurant owners [51.17]. This is something that Divya is doing through InSeason Fish, a sustainable seafood initiative that she co-founded: “We worked with the National Restaurants Association of India, which has chapters in different states. And we looked specifically at the Goa chapter and got all the members of that chapter together to talk to all the restaurant owners about eating or even serving seafood more sustainably, talk to them a little bit about sourcing their seafood in a more responsible way, and specifically also about how they should remove sharks from their menus and not keep pushing it as sort of an authentically Goan item.” This sparked a lot of discussion, but Divya was able to suggest more sustainable species that, handily, were lower priced. “So it really works for their bottom lines as well.”
Of course, as with any behavioural change, these things take time. But it is a very positive step in the right direction, and one that shows the benefits of working with and understanding people as well as the species we are trying to protect. “I think that is a good way to think about what species we need to focus on, when it comes to our research and conservation efforts – also including species that are socioeconomically important. So those that are fished regularly by fishing communities or consumed by them, traded by them, or even have some local social or cultural importance because they tend to be a good way to even start engaging with communities about topics like conservation,” says Trisha. Divya agrees, and adds: “I think if we are really interested in conservation, we really should be studying what humans are doing and why they’re doing it. And I think that’s a big gap, which now we are trying to fill a little bit in India, but I mean, I think a lot more of that is needed before we can start sort of evidence-based interventions or conservation.”
The papers mentioned in this episode are:
Karnad, D., Narayani, S., Kottillil, S., Kottillil, S., Gupta, T., Barnes, A., Dias, A. and Krishna, Y.C., 2024. Regional hotspots and drivers of shark meat consumption in India. Conservation Science and Practice, 6(1), p.e13069.
Gupta, T., Karnad, D., Oyanedel, R., Booth, H., Abhiram, T., Gaonkar, H. and Milner-Gulland, E.J., 2025. Identifying leverage points for sustainability in India’s shark supply chains. Marine Policy, 173, p.106580.
ABOUT OUR GUESTS
Dr Divya Karnad
Divya Karnad is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies with a PhD in Geography from Rutgers University, USA, and a Masters in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from the Post Graduate Programme run by the National Centre for Biological Sciences and Centre for Wildlife Studies.
Prior to joining Ashoka University, she consulted with the Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organization and founded InSeason Fish, a sustainable seafood initiative. The focus of her work is marine conservation, fisheries management, the geography of seafood, climate and aquaculture and common property theory. She has published in scientific journals like Ambio, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, Marine Policy and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
You can find out more about InSeason Fish here, or on Instagram.
Dr Trisha Gupta
Trisha Gupta is a marine scientist from India. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Oxford on the conservation and sustainable management of shark and ray fisheries in India. She has several years of experience working with fisheries, marine conservation and local communities. Her work focuses on reconciling the basic needs of people with the conservation of highly threatened species, in social-ecological systems in the Global South.
She currently works as a conservation scientist at the EDGE of Existence programme at ZSL, where she helps support early career conservationists’ work on the conservation of highly threatened species across the globe.
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