A video posted on Facebook is garnering national attention, after it shows that an estimate of around 100 sharks are found washed ashore with their fins cut off with some suspecting it to be a foul play.
Across the beach in Carmarthenshire, Wales, a woman filmed the clip. She said it was “such a sad, wasteful sight. I stopped counting in the end as every wave brought more bodies.”
It appears like the fish seen in the video are called smooth-hounds, who are also known as dogfish, according to a spokesman for the Marine Conservation Society.
“It was mostly smooth-hounds down Burry Port, but heavily pregnant ones with pups hanging out of them,” the woman added. “I dread to think how many were still floating in the sea. I’m sure what we saw was a small percentage of what was thrown back.”
Wales Online reported that experts believed fishermen illegally removed the dorsal fins of the animals before throwing them back into the water and leaving them unable to swim, so they sink and die from suffocation of they get eaten by predators.
“Shark finning for overseas markets in Welsh waters would be highly unusual and almost certainly illegal,” a spokesman from the Marine Conservation Society said.
Fins are often used for shark fin soup and other traditional medicine, which is very common and infamous in China.
According to the Mirror, finning kills up to 100 million sharks every year.
“If you notice the fins have been cut off. It’s commercial fishermen selling the fins to the Chinese for medical purposes, then chucking the carcasses overboard,” Ian Wish, a fisherman, told Mirror.
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