SHARK FINs

Following an inside lead, in July, we were able to film with a drone, the largest fin drying operation on this island. The fishery here accounts for 10% of the total shark catch in Indonesia, making this the largest in the entire country. The filming of shark fins is important for serval reasons, some major ones being, helping raise awareness of the scale of operations and identifying species that make up the trade. In the images we captured we are able to see a large number of thresher sharks, a concerning sight given the status of thresher sharks, however their fins have high value on the shark fin trade. The discovery of this particular area where fins are dried also gives us a better idea of how the trade changes through the entire process, for example, before this we were under the impression the shark fins were dried in Surabaya, a nearby city, but now we know they are first processed in Lombok.

An image depicting the shark fins being left out to dry.