Roaming through Singapore’s wet markets, weaving in and out of the small spaces between stalls, I jump at things I don’t expect to move. My shoes slip, grip reduced by usage, ensuring I move more cautiously than I normally would across the frequently washed floor. I search slowly for one thing in the vibrant sprawl. Seemingly invisible at first, once they catch my eye, I can’t un-see them. To visitors like me the image feels foreign: a small, heaped pile of sharks nestled into the corner of the market stalls.

A stall owner at Little India’s Tekka Centre says sharks are no longer a routine presence, but the story of Singapore’s shark trade runs much deeper. As the stall owner tells me, the sharks sold in the wet markets are a small portion, near nothing compared to what really comes through Singapore.

In 2017, TRAFFIC, otherwise known as the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, released a report finding Singapore was the second largest shark fin trader by value worldwide. According to the report, between 2005 and 2014 Singapore imported 14,114 tonnes of shark fin and for 2012 to 2013 the recorded value of the export trade was $40 million US, or just over $62 million AUD.

While no updated TRAFFIC report has been released since, according to The Observatory of Economic Complexity’s 2023 records, Singapore, by value, was the world’s largest importer of fresh/chilled shark fins ($4.24 million), and the second largest importer (37.5M) and exporter (31.2M) of frozen shark fins.

Eight years on, many are still trying to answer questions of accountability, transparency, conservation and decline raised by the TRAFFIC report. For the country so prominent in this worldwide trade, does something need to change?  Or is it about to? While the trade remains a tangled web, and experts think the global statistic holds in 2025, many believe Singapore’s position as the second largest player gives it the potential to lead the way forward.

Wildlife Conservation Society senior program manager for sharks and rays Dana Tricarico says these are reasons for a focused lense on Singapore.  

“Singapore is a priority not because it’s a producer, but because it holds the potential to be a regional leader in enforcing trade regulations, improving traceability systems, and influencing market dynamics through policy reform and private sector engagement,” she says.

In 2024 World Wildlife Fund found up to 100 million sharks are killed worldwide globally.  In an interview with Oceanographic in July 2025, Wildlife Conservation Society director of shark and ray conservation Luke Warwick says: “The world is at a tipping point for sharks and rays. More than 37 per cent of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, rising to more than 70 per cent for species in international trade.” Sharks are among the oceans most severely impacted species, highlighting the accelerating ecological crisis.

Tricarico warns sharks can’t be thought of as just another species at risk. They play a foundational role in the ocean’s survival.

“They are vital to the health of marine ecosystems, and their loss has cascading effects on ocean food webs and biodiversity,” she says.

Technological developments for change.

Experts say we now understand the global shark trade, and Singapore’s role in it, better than ever before. Awareness is high, attitudes are shifting and advancing tools such as DNA barcoding and traceability apps are forging a path for hope.

New technologies are starting to transform the global shark trade, some even being worked on in Singapore. National University of Singapore life sciences graduate Anya Ramanan was heavily involved in the 2025 study ‘In troubled waters: applying DNA barcoding to monitor Singapore’s shark fin trade’. Since around 2018, DNA barcoding has been utilised as an insight into the shark fin trade in Singapore, identifying the species being sold locally.

“A lot of the samples that we found were from appendix 2 appendix 3 of CITES. So, they’re supposed to be somewhat regulated,” Ramanan says.

CITES listings are classifications that detail the level of protection needed for certain animal species to prevent exploitation in international trade. Appendix 1 is the most protected. These animals are considered endangered. Appendix 2 is the middle ground, where the trade of these animals needs to be controlled so they do not become endangered, and appendix 3 is country specific in protections.

Despite describing the process as somewhat tedious and expensive, Ramanan says the findings speak to how the trade operates globally and shows a potential way of monitoring what really comes through Singapore’s customs.

“We found this one shark that hadn’t been identified before in Singapore and is primarily present in the Atlantic region,” she says.

“Unless you do random samples and DNA barcoding at customs if you think they should, you can’t do anything for change.”

At a customs level, Fin Finder, an AI powered visual species identifier app developed by the team at Conservation International Singapore, has been used since 2022. But in combatting the illegal trade, Ramanan says not all species are identifiable by just a photo.

On a more global scale, TRAFFIC, publisher of the 2017 report, has recently produced the digital traceability tool, SharkTrace which has been dubbed an ‘emerging solution’. TRAFFIC’s fisheries trade programme leader Glenn Sant, who headed up the team behind Shark trace’s development, stresses the technology’s traceability offers a backbone for governments and organisations in understanding where things are coming from.

“Transparency is about what’s in the supply chain, and it’s one of the biggest problems for Singapore and a whole lot of other countries,” he says.

“If Facebook can collect all this data about what I look at and give it to companies, are you telling me we can’t collect the data on what’s being caught in the seas and traded?” 

The Dorsal Effect founder Kathy Xu says data collection forms a basis for change to happen. Without accurate accessible data, recommendations cannot take form in policy, or even inform individual change.

The Dorsal Effect is an organisation Xu started in 2013, which promotes shark conservation and sustainable livelihoods outside of the shark trade. Xu’s work in shark conservation extends outside her organisation to on-the-ground data collection at Singapore’s Jurong Fishery Port with researcher Naomi Clark-Shen.

“If you don’t have the data, it’s not going to be compelling for promise,” Xu says.

SharkTrace has been successfully trialled in one Australian fishery, and one in South Africa. Glenn Sant says the hardest part will be getting the first country to sign on and implement it. From there, he believes others will follow. They may even have to. He believes Singapore, as a major trade hub, could be this creator of change for other countries.  

“Don’t say you can’t do traceability because here it is. We’ve done it. We’ve created it. You don’t need to go and create it. You just need to use it,” he says.

“Anywhere along the supply chain a country can say, ‘well, we’re only accepting a trade that’s accompanied by traceability’. To me this sends a message to so many countries saying, ‘look, you know, this is coming’. And so, you better start to work out how you’re going to do it.”

Barriers to change

Outside of technological developments, experts and conservationists in Singapore admit they struggle to know where to begin, describing the situation as “helpless”, “doomed”, “complex” and “confusing”. Yet alongside this uncertainty comes words such as “hopeful” and “potential”.

Singapore is home to many individuals such as Kathy Xu who care incredibly deeply about sharks, having spent years of their lives devoted to researching them in the hopes of creating change.  Xu recalls crying into her mask when snorkelling for the first time alongside whale sharks in Exmouth.

“I have grown to learn to appreciate the complexity behind the shark fishing industry. But at the same time, it also makes me feel a little bit helpless,” she says.

Part of this complexity lies in the slow pace of policy implementation. Sant says noticeable change can take up to 10 years if its not urgent or a government priority and CITES listings may take up to five. He notes when change takes a decade to show results, it can feel distant and difficult to measure.

“Particularly for a lot of the shark and ray species, a lot of them are already threatened. If you’re not seeing less fishing effort on them, so overall mortality reducing, and you’re waiting 10 years, that’s 10 years further of overfishing on them,” he says.

James Cook University Singapore associate professor of environmental science Neil Hutchinson says these turnaround times result in more challenges.

“The good side of them being listed is the fact that the issue has been flagged and they’re at risk, and it’s people who have done the basic research that enables us to identify the fact they’re at risk, but you’re also seeing species over time, and the category that they’re listed under, becoming worse and worse,” he says.

“The Bamboo sharks, when I started working on them, maybe seven or eight years ago, they were listed as near threatened, but now it’s sort of vulnerable.”

The Singapore government’s priorities also play a part in change. Singapore Food Agency’s 2024 report revealed 90 per cent of Singapore’s food supply relies on imports from other countries. While Singapore is shifting to produce more food locally, trade still defines its food stability.

As Xu says: “It’s not exactly self-sufficient.”

Xu explains how when food security is a large government priority, preventing certain kinds of food, such as shark, from coming to Singapore, becomes a task that requires a lot more work.  

One message stood out clearly from many of these experts. Change cannot come at the expense of the jobs that sustain people’s lives.

At the beginning of her career in shark conservation, Xu travelled to Lombok to see what shark fishing was all about. She wanted the truth behind an online post that framed shark fishermen as ‘disgusting individuals’.    

Dr Hutchinson says the aims for the future of the shark trade such as sustainable fisheries and reducing fishing impacts will affect those whose livelihoods rely on the industry. He poses the question: ‘What else will they do?’

“Management conservation is not just about the animals. Arguably, it’s more about the people,” he says.

Human demand

Pasarfish co-founder Kenny Lek says his Singapore-based organisation aims to tackle local demand as a point of change. While working predominantly in the fish industry, the organisation speaks to efforts towards traceability, sustainability and changing how local Singaporeans view the seafood industry.

“We want to shift consumerism into one with sustainable and consciousness which hopefully shifts the curve in favour of our environment,” he says.

“We conduct research to better understand the biodiversity of fishes that lands in our ports and markets while conducting outreach programmes to further educate individuals on the importance of sustainable seafood. We encourage more people to ask questions about where our seafood comes from to how they are caught.”

Lek says human consumption is patterned by the rise, the fall and then the alternative. That there may even be a natural shift as more fisheries collapse due to the lack of fishes available. He believes this may place an importance on conservation efforts.

Dr Hutchinson says we must ensure some other species don’t take the place of sharks, replacing one issue with another.

“No doubt if you then have a vacuum that will be filled with something else. With fisheries, we’ve seen that over the years. Fish species are targeted, fished until the populations plummet, and then people move on to fishing something else,” he says.

The future of Singapore’s shark trade

Having worked in the industry for more than 30 years, Glenn Sant says the changes and tremendous efforts being made today give him hope.

“I’m quite optimistic by the next 10 years holds. Because if I look back and see where we’ve got to, we’re so much further. And it seems to be quickening. It’s like it gets faster,” he says.

Wildlife Conversation Society’s Dana Tricarico says Singapore has the mechanisms in place, but action is needed now.

She says: “With science, policy, community engagement, and political will aligned, recovery is possible, but the window is closing.”

This story was produced as part of a federal government New Colombo Plan funded Curtin Journalism Singapore Study Tour.