Americans Are Unknowingly Buying Critically Endangered Shark Meat

Food products containing shark are being sold in grocery stores, seafood markets and online across the United States—and in some cases, they come from species at risk of extinction.

This is the warning of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who used DNA barcoding to analyze 30 such shark products purchased in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia in 2021 and 2022.

They found that nearly one-third of the samples came from endangered or critically endangered species—including great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, shortfin mako and tope.

"Of the 29 samples, 93 percent were ambiguously labeled as 'shark,' and one of the two products labeled at the species level was mislabeled," said Savannah J. Ryburn, the study's lead author, in a statement.