Globally, shark catch has been declining since a peak of over 900,000 tonnes/yr in 2003 (FAO, 2008).

Year    Catch - tonnes
1999 - 863244
2000 - 889117
2001 - 862880
2002 - 864137
2003 - 900151
2004 - 850415
2005 - 773689
2006 - 753110
2007 - 789282
2008 - 736491

However the key question is whether these numbers are the true catch. These numbers are landings and do not account for illegal catches or discards. Since fins are brought ashore and not the full carcass this could very well be an underestimate of the numnber of animals killed each year.

An analysis of the flow of shark fins through the Hong Kong fish markets suggests that somewhere between 1.21 - 2.29 million metric tonnes of sharks are killed each year for the fin trade (Lack and Sant, 2009). This means that the biomass of sharks in the fin trade is 3-4 times higher than the FAO statistics. The total number of sharks killed and passing through the fin trade is estimated to be between 26 to 73 million, with and average (median) of 38 million killed each year.

One must also remember that a reduction in catch can also translate to a reduction in the number of sharks that remain in the ocean, rather than a reduction in effort.

FAO. © 2008-2010. Fisheries Topics: Research. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA). Text by Jean- Francois Pulvenis. In: FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department [online]. Rome. Updated 27 February 2009. [Cited 19 August 2010]. http://www.fao.org/fishery/sofia/en

Lack, M., and G. Sant. 2009. Trends in global shark catch and recent developments in management. Page 33. TRAFFIC International, Cambridge.