How Many Sharks Are Killed Each Year? Fishing and Finning

Where the 100 million estimate comes from

The best-known figure comes from a 2013 study led by marine ecologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Canada. His team estimated the total weight of sharks killed by fishing worldwide, including catches that are never officially reported and sharks thrown back dead. They put total catches at about 1.44 million tonnes in 2000 and 1.41 million tonnes in 2010.

Converting that weight into numbers, using average shark weights, gave about 100 million sharks killed in 2000 and about 97 million in 2010. The uncertainty is large: because so many catches go unrecorded and average weights vary, the possible range ran from 63 million to 273 million sharks a year. That is why the result is usually quoted as “about 100 million”, an order of magnitude rather than an exact count.

The newest estimate: at least 80 million a year

A 2024 study in the journal Science, also led by Worm, combined catch data with the shark laws of countries and regional fisheries bodies. It estimated that total shark deaths in fisheries rose from at least 76 million in 2012 to at least 80 million in 2019, and that about 25 million of those sharks belonged to species threatened with extinction. Because the two studies used different data and methods, their totals cannot be compared directly.

The trend differed by habitat. Deaths in coastal fisheries rose by about 4%, while deaths in open-ocean (pelagic) fisheries fell by about 7%, especially in the Atlantic and western Pacific. The authors’ conclusion was blunt: laws against shark finning had not reduced the overall number of sharks killed, but regional bans on catching or keeping sharks had some success.

How many sharks are killed for their fins?

Fins are the most valuable part of most sharks, used mainly for shark fin soup, a luxury dish in parts of East and Southeast Asia. A 2006 study combined trade records from Hong Kong, long the world’s largest fin market, with DNA identification of fins. It estimated that the fins of 26 to 73 million sharks, with a middle estimate of about 38 million, were traded each year in the late 1990s. By weight, that was three to four times more shark than official catch statistics reported at the time.

Shark finning means cutting off a shark’s fins and throwing the body back into the sea, often while the shark is still alive. Unable to swim properly, it dies. Finning at sea is now banned in many places, including US and European Union waters, where sharks must be landed with their fins naturally attached. Finning bans, however, do not limit how many sharks are caught: a shark landed whole and sold for both meat and fins is just as dead.

Bycatch: sharks caught by accident

Many sharks die as bycatch, meaning they are caught on hooks or in nets meant for other fish such as tuna and swordfish. Open-ocean longlines, which can carry thousands of hooks, catch large numbers of blue sharks, makos, silky sharks and hammerheads. Some are released, but many are already dead when the gear is hauled in or die later from the stress of capture.

Hammerheads are especially fragile. Studies summarized by the IUCN found that about 56% of great hammerheads caught on US bottom longlines were dead by the time the line came up. Coastal gillnets, trawls and the shark nets used to protect some beaches in South Africa and Australia add to the toll.

Which sharks are declining fastest?

Ocean-going sharks have been hit hardest. A 2021 study in Nature found that the global abundance of oceanic sharks and rays has fallen by 71% since 1970, driven by an 18-fold rise in relative fishing pressure, and that three-quarters of the 31 oceanic species are now threatened with extinction. A global reassessment published the same year concluded that roughly 37% of all sharks, rays and chimaeras are threatened, with overfishing the main threat in every case.

Some of the best-known victims are:

• Great hammerhead: Critically Endangered since 2019, with an estimated decline of more than 80% over about 70 years. Its large fins are prized, and many die when hooked. See the great hammerhead profile and Why are great hammerheads Critically Endangered?
• Shortfin mako: Endangered since 2019. This fast open-ocean shark is valued for both its meat and its fins and is caught in large numbers on longlines. See the shortfin mako profile.
• Oceanic whitetip: Critically Endangered since 2019, after steep declines in all oceans.

Why sharks cannot keep up

Unlike most fish, which produce thousands or millions of eggs, sharks grow slowly, mature late and have few young. A female great hammerhead gives birth only every two years, after an 11-month pregnancy, and bull sharks in the Gulf of Mexico may not mature until they are about 14 to 18 years old. Even under ideal conditions, a great hammerhead population can grow by at most about 7% a year.

That means sharks cannot replace losses quickly. When a population is fished faster than it can rebuild, numbers fall year after year, and recovery can take decades even after fishing stops.

What is being done to protect sharks?

Protection has grown since the early 2000s. CITES, the treaty that regulates international wildlife trade, listed the oceanic whitetip, the porbeagle and three hammerheads in 2013, silky and thresher sharks in 2016, mako sharks in 2019, and in 2022 the whole requiem shark family and the remaining hammerheads. International trade in these species now needs permits showing they come from legal, sustainable fisheries.

Many countries have also acted on fins. The United States banned finning in 2000, required fins to stay attached under a 2010 law and banned buying and selling shark fins in 2022. The European Union banned finning in 2003 and has required fins to stay attached since 2013. Canada banned shark fin imports and exports in 2019, and the United Kingdom passed a similar law in 2023. Some fisheries go further: fleets fishing for tuna under ICCAT, the Atlantic tuna commission, have been barred from keeping hammerheads since 2010, and since 2022 US Atlantic fishers have not been allowed to keep shortfin makos.

Sharks kill far fewer people

The contrast with shark bites is striking. The International Shark Attack File confirmed 65 unprovoked shark bites worldwide in 2025, nine of them fatal, close to the recent average of about 61 bites and eight deaths a year. For every person killed in an unprovoked shark bite, people kill around ten million sharks. More on the real risk is in How often do sharks attack humans?