SHARK FINs of lombok
Following an inside lead, in July, we were able to film with a drone, the largest fin drying operation on the island. The fishery here accounts for 10% of the total shark catch in Indonesia, it is the biggest shark market in Lombok, and arguably the second largest in Indonesia. 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 shark fins, 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 see they are first processed in Lombok.
A scientific paper called “Pre-export shark fin processing to conceal CITES-listed species: a case-study from a shark fin seizure in Colombia” written in 2022 highlights one of the concerns with early processing…
“The case study presented here raises concerns about the changes occurring when processing takes place in the supply chain, impeding any kind of identification of illegally traded shark fins without genetic tools. If early-supply chain processing becomes the norm, it will introduce significant identification challenges for law enforcement throughout the rest of the supply chain.”
Apparently, there are 20 shark fin exporters in Surabaya, the fins mainly go to Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, Japan and Thailand. This city is the main shipping point. These companies export more than a ton of sharks per shipment, so its well known that these exporters often take advantage of these large numbers and insert fins taken from protected sharks in the middle or bottom of the stack, knowing it’s impossible for them all to be checked.
I’ve read that a verifier who works in the east java area, said they would work until late at night, two verifiers would be tasked with unpacking every sack of shark fins, they said its quite difficult to detect the illegal fins.
So not all the cites appendix II species are banned from export completely, the silky shark is allowed but limited quantity. In 2019 data showed that 60-70 % of the catch was silky shark and hammerheads were the fourth most common. Silks and appendix II can be sold domestically but the market in Indonesia is so small… So these exporters in Surabaya have to obtain permission to export these shark fins… they have to have an export worthy recommendation from the BPSPL and the Surabaya fish quarantine, quality control and fisheries product saferty center. Then pass examination by customs and excise officers. A small obstacle for the price fetched by these fin exports.
According to a paper published in December in the journal Fisheries Research by an international team, 38.5 percent of 582 fins gathered in a nationwide sample came from species the IUCN classified as endangered or vulnerable. Half of the samples came from just five shark species:
the endangered scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini);
the vulnerable bigeye thresher shark (Alopias superciliosus)
pelagic thresher shark (Alopias pelagicus),
the near-threatened silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis)
and blue shark (Prionace glauca).
Silky sharks are the most commonly sold shark species in Indonesia and the third most commonly sold worldwide, after blue sharks and scalloped hammerheads. Yet the IUCN lists the silky shark’s population dynamics as “poorly known.” Fisheries cannot be managed well if the basics of how many animals there are and where they are found is unknown.
Uncontrolled shark overfishing will have long-term impacts. The recovery of shark populations is very slow due to their low reproduction rates. Sharks can only reproduce two years after reaching adult age, with a range of 1-40 pups. Sharks reach adult age when they are around 30 years old.
Declining shark populations will affect human food chains. If sharks as the main predators are missing, middle-sized predators will dominate. They will consume smaller fishes that are important food sources for human.
There is more about the trade we learn each day with our close proximity to the men involved, it’s a formidable enemy with a lot of power, and a huge part of our Project will always be striving to better understand that enemy, so we may defeat it.
An image depicting the shark fins being left out to dry.
