China’s appetite for shark fin

By MARK GODFREY, reporting from Beijing, China
Papua New Guinea is keen to satisfy China’s demand for shark fins, set to surge with the onset of Chinese New Year next month.
“We’re getting a lot of enquiries from China,” Carson Koviro, provincial supports officer with the island nation’s National Fisheries Authority, said.
Koviro explained that while the authority’s emphasis was on driving tuna exports to China, shark fin sales have been strong.
The trade is sustainable, he said: “We have a lot of sharks. It’s bycatch, and rather than throwing them back in the sea we can ship them to China.”
Koviro also said his organisation will next year open an office or appoint an agent in China.
Among the Papua New Guinea shark fin suppliers are Ailan Seafoods Ltd and Wamomo Seafood Exporters Ltd, whose shark fins were graded as pectoral, dorsal and caudal fins sold dried in 20kg to 25kg poly bags.
Conservationists take a dim view of Papua New Guinea’s eagerness to satisfy Chinese demand for shark fins.
“Significant levels of bycatch of any species, let alone vulnerable top-predators such as shark should not be allowed.
“It should not be a matter of sell or waste it, it should be “don’t catch it” in the first place,” Steve Trent of Wild Aid, an NGO campaigning against the shark fin trade, said.
In her recently published book, Demon Fish, journalist Juliet Eilperin had reported that demand from Chinese diners had ensured more than 73 million sharks are killed each year and that 90% of sharks in the world’s open oceans had already disappeared.
Restaurants in Beijing, meanwhile, had been stocking up on shark fins for the traditional New Year’s festival, which starts on Jan 25.
Prices for a bowl of shark fin soup at three restaurants contacted in Beijing (Asen Shark’s Fin Restaurant, Shun Feng and Thai Village) range from  US$59.30 to US$124.
Prices depend on the size of fins – large, complete fins cost a lot more, but restaurateurs claim there’s a glut of fake fins on the market.
Several lower-end restaurants contacted for this article offer less expensive shark fin soup, with prices ranging from US$37 to US$7.
But regular consumers of shark fin soup doubt the quality of the material used.
“They often use bean vermicelli,” one customer at Asen Shark’s Fin, said referring to a popular Chinese noodle-type food made of bean powder.

“It looks like shark’s fin very much, and people not used to shark’s fin won’t know the difference. Sometimes the restaurant adds a little bit of shark’s fin, maybe, but it’s not very pure.”