One third of more than five hundred shark species are threatened with extinction according to World Conservation Union. Many species of shark are facing a grave threat to their existence because of worldwide fishing trends. Fishermen used to cut the lines and let the sharks go, but not anymore because in recent years fishermen have kept the sharks to sell their lucrative fins. Shark overfishing can remove fifty to ninety percent of an entire shark species in only ten years, it is alarming but the projections were based on an ongoing study by the Conservation Union Shark Research Group.

Governments and non governmental organization (NGO) must work together to educate the public and fishermen about the effects of overfishing. Wild Aid says that China is the world’s biggest importer of shark’s fin, which conservationists say are cut from sharks which are thrown back into the ocean to die. Wild Aid put the worldwide trade in shark’s fins at ten thousand tons a year. It is estimated that thirty eight to seventy million sharks are killed each year for their fins.

As the Chinese economy has grown, shark fins consumption has also risen exacerbating pressures on shark population that were already vulnerable to overfishing because sharks breed so slowly.