Brazil weighs new measures to manage shark trade, fishing

The Brazilian government is reviewing its legal framework for the trade in sharks. Measures now under consideration include a potential ban on fin exports and stricter rules for shark fishing and imports, as well as revising the rules governing the fishing of blue shark (Prionace glauca), the only species that’s legal to catch in Brazilian waters.

At a Sept. 3 meeting, a motion to ban the export of shark fins was approved by the National Environmental Council (CONAMA), an advisory and deliberative body in charge of the country’s environmental norms and standards. The approved motion would also prohibit the use of wire leaders, a type of fishing gear used to target sharks, in industrial fishing within the country’s marine protected areas.

In a statement urging approval of the motion at the meeting, CONAMA member José Truda Palazzo Junior, founder of the Humpback Whale Institute and co-author of the motion, said ending the use of wire leaders in marine protected areas would reduce the incidental capture not only of sharks but also of other threatened species by up to 40%.

CONAMA’s decision amounts to a strong but nonbinding recommendation to the government to implement such policies. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA), which presides over CONAMA, and Brazil’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA, were among those voting to approve the motion.

In his statement at the livestreamed meeting, Truda cited a recent Mongabay investigation revealing that state-run institutions are bulk-buying shark meat for public schools, hospitals and prisons, raising serious environmental and public health concerns.

“In recent months, Brazil has been exposed internationally in a series of reports, including on the world’s largest environmental news portal, Mongabay, which were reproduced in Brazil by Folha de S.Paulo [newspaper], ((o))eco [news portal], and several other media outlets, fully exposing the total chaos in which commercial shark exploitation in Brazil finds itself,” Truda said. “This directly impacts our international commitments, which we have been undertaking in the areas of marine biodiversity and even climate, given the proven importance of top predators in maintaining the ocean’s carbon cycle.”

In late July, Mongabay revealed that 1,012 public tenders had been issued since 2004 to procure more than 5,400 metric tons of shark meat worth at least 112 million reais ($20 million). Those tenders covered 542 municipalities in 10 of Brazil’s 26 states. Shark meat can contain high levels of mercury and arsenic, which scientists say can be harmful to human health when consumed in large enough quantities; at the same time, overfishing can deplete populations of sharks, which are increasingly recognized as troubled keystone species critical to the marine environment.

As shark meat is packaged and sold in Brazil under the generic name cação, rather than as tubarão, the Portuguese word for shark, Brazilians eating it tend not to know what kind of fish it is, surveys show. Such mislabeling can also allow the sale of threatened species as cação, studies show.

Read more: Revealed: Brazilian state buys endangered angelsharks for school lunches

Conservationists say shark fins, considered a delicacy in Asian markets, are the main driver of shark overfishing — and the subsequent decline of 71% in the populations of some species in the open ocean over the past 50 years.

Around the turn of the century, governments around the world took steps to ban shark finning, requiring boats to bring the whole shark to port if they wanted to trade the fins. However, some researchers believe the policies may have inadvertently propped up the trade in shark meat, which skyrocketed in the 2000s.

Blue shark trade at stake

At the Sept. 3 CONAMA meeting, the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture (MPA) took a stand against the motion. “We are against it, precisely because there is already a norm regulating the capture of the only shark that is currently permitted to be caught,” said Sandra de Souza, director of MPA’s department of industrial, recreational, and sport fishing. She was referring to a joint ordinance issued by MPA and MMA in April that sets rules for managing, monitoring and enforcing blue shark catches, including quotas.

“Before ordinance No. 30, there was no such catch limit, and today, for the year 2025, just over 3,400 tons of blue shark can be caught,” Souza said at the meeting. The ordinance also reduced from 19 to two the number of legal blue-shark fishing methods, she added, and established that catches can only be landed at ports that have a federal inspection system.

However, right after Souza made her statement, MMA’s executive secretary, João Paulo Capobianco, announced the suspension of the joint ordinance, citing an MMA report pointing to “the risk of increased pressure on other endangered species of elasmobranch due to low selectivity of gear,” and enforcement flaws, including “inadequacy of the monitoring and control system [which is] based on self-declaration and with low observer coverage.”

“The minister of fisheries already agreed that the ordinance was issued without the necessary precautions to ensure the protection of the species,” Capobianco said at the CONAMA meeting. “Therefore, the argument that there is ongoing regulation that would resolve these issues is no longer applicable.”

Conservationists celebrated the measure, saying the suspension of the ordinance will put an end to targeted fishing of blue sharks; capture of the species will now only be allowed as bycatch, as it was prior the ordinance. Industry groups, however, say the measure will harm the Brazilian fishing industry, as imports of blue shark and other species will continue as usual.

Despite Capobianco’s announcement, the ordinance hasn’t been suspended yet. A new one is being drafted to replace it, but its contents remain to be seen. The ministries of environment and fisheries, MMA and MPA, didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

Cadu Villaça, head of the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Collective (CONEPE), an industry trade group, told Mongabay by phone that he respects CONAMA’s decision-making process, including for the approved motion, but disagrees with the motion itself.

Implementing CONAMA’s recommendation to ban wire leaders would make surface longline fishing unviable, especially in southern Brazil, he said. He also criticized the recommended ban on shark fin exports, arguing that for fishers who capture an animal, selling the fins can “add a lot of value to the biomass you have killed.”

Villaça also said the meeting wasn’t the appropriate place to announce the revocation of an ordinance that involves the fishing industry and MPA. “I think it’s a betrayal, a disloyalty, it is a feeling of great frustration,” he said.

“They did not invite us, they did not open up the option for a representative entity from the fishing industry to participate,” Villaça said. “They are simply destroying an activity that has high employability, a good level of income distribution and food production.”

Villaça, an oceanographer, added that fishing poses no risks to the blue shark due to its high fertility rate. He published a statement on CONEPE’s website criticizing the ordinance suspension.

Other industry groups — the Brazilian Association of Fish Industries (ABIPESCA), the Brazilian Association for the Promotion of Fish (ABRAPES) and the Union of Shipowners and Fishing Industries of Itajaí and Region (SINDIPI) — didn’t reply to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

Mongabay investigation cited as evidence in lawsuit

Beyond the latest developments, MMA said in a previous statement to Mongabay that it was reviewing a wide range of regulations for shark fishing, including updating the list of endangered species and reviewing an exemption that allows the import of species whose capture and ensuing sale are forbidden in Brazil.

Braulio Dias, director of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity at MMA, said the Mongabay investigation spurred “greater awareness of the seriousness of the problem we are having with sharks” and contributed to CONAMA’s decisions and the ongoing revisions overall.

“Another important aspect that you have reported is the issue of increasing consumption of sharks in Brazil, including government purchases in several states to supply school meals, which is absurd, because a large part of these species are endangered,” Dias told Mongabay by phone on Sept. 4.

Mongabay’s findings are also being used by lawmaker Nilto Tatto, leader of the environmental caucus in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, to call for a parliamentary hearing to discuss government purchases of shark meat for public institutions. In 2023, Tatto proposed a bill to ban federal purchases of shark meat, but it stalled in the lower house’s Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. He told Mongabay he would send the investigation to all federal agencies involved in food procurements, requesting they cease any shark meat purchases.

Mongabay’s exposé was also cited as part of a class-action civil suit to ban federal public institutions from issuing tenders to purchase shark meat. In a hearing on Sept. 3, Nathalie Gil, director of conservation NGO Sea Shepherd Brasil, which originally filed the suit in December 2024, described Mongabay’s revelations, including the database of municipal and state public procurement tenders, which is now recorded in the hearing transcript in the case file, she said.

At the hearing, key specialists described environmental, health and human rights problems they said are linked to shark meat consumption. Gill said she expects the judge to issue a decision on the case soon. She added that Sea Shepherd agreed to suspend the lawsuit if the federal government immediately stops public purchases of shark meat.

“The ideal is not to fish” blue sharks, Gill said, adding she’s hopeful the latest measures, including the suspension of the blue shark fishing ordinance, could lead to policies “ideal or close to ideal” to ensure protection of the species. “What we are really emphasizing here is: what measures will actually protect this animal?,” she said.

Banner image: Blue shark (Prionace glauca), Faial-Pico Channel, Azores Islands, Portugal. Image courtesy of Diego Delso via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and the first Brazilian to win the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.  Member of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, she is also the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.

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