Law enforcement authorities have confiscated a massive haul of valuable animal parts, according to CBS. 

What's happening?

Peruvian authorities have seized a shipment of 10,000 shark fins bound for China. The fins came from threatened blue sharks, pelagic thresher sharks, and common thresher sharks, having been smuggled in from Ecuador. 

The shipment was valued at $11.2 million. The entire fin trade industry is estimated to be valued at around $550 million annually and kill 73 million sharks. 

Aside from poaching, sharks also face habitat degradation due to warming oceans, spurred by atmospheric pollution.  

Why is the shark fin trade concerning?

When a shark has had its fin cut off by poachers, it frequently bleeds to death even when released back into the ocean. Fish can pump water over their gills, but sharks must maintain forward movement to keep absorbing oxygen. By losing their fins and hampering their mobility, many sharks die from suffocation after being rereleased. The maiming also makes these sharks targets for predation. 

Sharks are vital apex predators, keeping prey populations in check, cycling nutrients for species further down the food chain, and their bodies even sequester carbon when they die. Some researchers posit that the disappearance of sharks could lead to the increasing collapse of coral reef ecosystems. 

What's being done about the shark fin industry?

Concerted protections leading to seizures, such as the latest in Peru, can deter would-be poachers, and multinational cooperation in further trade bans is ongoing. Other shark fin shipments have been recently intercepted in Thailand and Mexico.

Overharvesting, combined with slow repopulation rates among sharks, has conservationists worried that the demand for fins will lead to population collapses. 

"The billion-dollar fin and meat trade is driving the extinction of iconic shark and ray species. Now, more than ever, critical action must be taken before it's too late," Luke Warwick, director of Shark and Ray Conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society, told CBS.

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