Sharks on the Menu: Contamination, Exploitation, and Extinction
Sharks, rays, and skates have been on this planet for more than 400 million years, surviving mass extinctions that wiped out entire branches of life. Yet in just a few decades of human excess, many of these species have been pushed to the brink. They are not only hunted and killed deliberately but also dragged up as bycatch, mislabelled on supermarket shelves, and sold under generic terms like flake or cação to hide their identity. Now, research shows that when humans eat these animals, they’re also ingesting a cocktail of toxic metals that can damage brains, harm pregnancies, and trigger long-term health issues.
This isn’t just a conservation issue. It’s an indictment of the human mindset that views living beings as protein sources, commodities, or ingredients, rather than fellow inhabitants of Earth.
Sharks in Disguise: Endangered Flesh in US Markets
Earlier this year, researchers examined shark meat sold in the United States. Out of 30 samples, 31% came from endangered or critically endangered species, including great hammerheads and scalloped hammerheads. 93% of the samples carried generic labels like “shark,” while even the rare cases of species labelling were often incorrect.
The reality is grim: meat from animals listed under CITES and supposedly protected by international agreements is still ending up on dinner plates. Stripped of fins and identifying features, their bodies are carved into fillets, making it nearly impossible for consumers, or even sellers, to know which species is being traded.
But ignorance doesn’t erase responsibility. Selling the flesh of a keystone predator whose disappearance threatens the stability of entire ecosystems isn’t just a regulatory oversight. It’s evidence of how far human commerce will go to erase the identity of its victims in order to sell their bodies unchallenged.
What Humans Really Ingest When They Eat Sharks and Rays
A comprehensive review published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety examined metal and metalloid contamination in elasmobranchs, the group that includes sharks, rays, and skates. The findings were staggering.
▫️Arsenic was the most commonly detected element, and in most cases exceeded safety thresholds.
▫️Cadmium often surpassed the strictest allowable limits.
▫️Mercury and lead were sometimes within “legal” limits, but given their toxicity, “legal” doesn’t mean safe.
▫️Selenium, while sometimes protective against mercury, was inconsistent, especially in rays, where negative values meant no defence against mercury toxicity.
The combined exposure risk, known as the Total Hazard Quotient (THQ), regularly exceeded safe thresholds, especially in species like the silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis). In Asia, THQ values for this species reached 38, a figure that makes any level of human consumption unsafe.
The consequences aren’t abstract. Metals like mercury and arsenic are known neurotoxins and carcinogens. Pregnant people risk miscarriages or damage to developing foetuses. Children risk developmental delays, cognitive impairment, and long-term neurological problems. Older individuals and people with existing health conditions face heightened risks because their bodies are less capable of eliminating toxins.
In plain terms: eating shark or ray meat is eating poison.
Exploitation Hidden Behind Names
The deception runs deeper than the contamination. In many countries, shark and ray meat is deliberately hidden behind neutral terms. In Australia and the UK, “flake” is a common name for shark in fish and chip shops. In Brazil, cação fills school lunch trays, marketed as a cheap source of protein until scientists exposed the danger to children.
The generic naming is not an accident, it’s a deliberate erasure. If parents were told they were feeding their children “critically endangered hammerhead” or “mercury-laden silky shark,” they might hesitate. Strip the body of its fins, rename the meat, and the trade keeps flowing.
This sleight of hand isn’t just cultural convenience. It’s speciesist denial. By obscuring identity, sellers prevent empathy, reduce resistance, and smooth the path for continued exploitation.
Sharks as Commodities: From Bycatch to Byproducts
Even when they aren’t directly targeted, sharks and rays are ensnared in industrial fishing nets as bycatch. Once caught, their value is extracted in every possible way: flesh, liver oil, cartilage, gill plates. Their entire bodies are broken down into commodities.
The lack of bones, a quirk of their cartilaginous skeletons, makes them easier to process, one more factor driving their commodification. Low market value compared to “prime” fish species means their flesh is marketed to poorer communities, who are often most at risk of contamination and least protected by regulatory oversight.
This isn’t a story of cultural choice or survival necessity. It’s a story of a global fishing industry that treats the ocean as an open-air slaughterhouse, willing to push ancient species into extinction if there’s profit to be made.
Sharks Are Not Monsters
While humans slice, fry, and mislabel sharks, media depictions still paint them as monsters. Jaws created a mythology of bloodthirsty predators, even though humans kill over 100 million sharks every year, while shark-related human deaths average fewer than ten globally.
The Netflix documentary Shark Whisperer highlights the work of Ocean Ramsey, who free dives with great whites and tiger sharks to challenge this myth. Ramsay’s advocacy contributed to Hawaii’s ban on shark fishing, protecting over 40 species. Their message is simple: sharks are not monsters, they are victims of human supremacy.
The film underscores what activists have been saying for years: the real danger is not sharks killing humans. It’s humans killing sharks. With global shark and ray populations down 70% in the last 50 years, their absence will collapse marine ecosystems, destabilise oceanic oxygen production, and endanger countless other species.
When we kill sharks, we aren’t just erasing individuals. We are dismantling life-support systems for the planet.
Health Arguments as Conservation Tools
For abolitionists, the case against eating sharks and rays is straightforward: they are not ours to use. They are not property, not resources, not protein sources. But even within human-centred frameworks, the evidence is damning.
Eating these animals means eating metals known to cause brain damage, cancer, miscarriages, and developmental harm. It means feeding children contaminated flesh because the industry hides its origin behind neutral names. It means exposing the most vulnerable, infants, the elderly, the poor, to risks they never chose.
Public health arguments, while not the foundation of animal rights, can be powerful levers for change. Just as warnings about smoking reshaped public perception of tobacco, highlighting the toxic reality of shark consumption can help dismantle the demand that fuels both exploitation and extinction.
Beyond Consumption: Towards Emancipation
Every bite of shark meat is a vote for extinction. Every mislabelled fillet is another attempt to erase the individuality of beings who have swum the oceans since before the first trees took root on land.
The solution is not stricter labelling. It is not “sustainable fishing.” The solution is abolition: ending the mindset that other animals exist for us to catch, kill, and consume.
Sharks are keystone species whose absence would unravel ecosystems. But they are also individuals, each one with the will to live, the right to exist, and the same claim to freedom as any human.
The human compulsion to turn living beings into commodities has poisoned not only the ocean but ourselves. The metals accumulating in shark flesh are just one more reminder that domination has consequences, and that when we exploit others, we ultimately exploit ourselves.
We don’t need shark flesh, or shark oil, or shark cartilage. We don’t need “fish and chips” that are actually endangered predators. What we need is the courage to stop killing, stop hiding behind labels, and start recognising that respect, not exploitation, is the principle that keeps life in balance.
Every shark killed is a life stolen, a species pushed closer to extinction, and a toxin-laden meal that never needed to exist.
The choice is simple: reject the exploitation of sharks, rays, and skates. Protect the oceans. And stop treating life as if it were ours to take.