Having shark fin soup at a Chinese wedding banquet is delicacy engrained in a cultural tradition that stems from generosity and respect to guests. Fin Free Weddings was a movement of wedding couples from around the world showing respect for their guests and our oceans by taking an important stand for sharks.
In partnership with our Hong Kong and Vancouver friends, our Happy Hearts Love Sharks Wedding Contest stopped 80,000+ bowls of shark fin soup from being served at wedding banquets, saving approximately 8,000 sharks.
Each year, up to 73 million sharks are killed primarily for their fins, threatening one-third of open ocean sharks with extinction. The shark fin trade is like the now-illegal trades in ivory or bear paw, where the demand for a single high-value animal part drives the unsustainable slaughter and waste of the entire animal.
Used mainly for a dish called shark fin soup, the shark finning industry is driving shark populations around the globe to extinction and threatening the stability of our ocean ecosystem—something we all depend on, and something we can all have a hand in conserving for future generations.