America’s health craze for fish oil is wiping out the world’s rarest shark – Quartz

America’s health craze for fish oil is wiping out the world’s rarest shark – Quartz
Another day, another round of headlines about China’s butchering of rare species. Today’s bloodbath bulletin concerns whale sharks, which feed on plankton and can grow up to 40 feet (12 meters)—about the length of four station wagons. The shark is so vulnerable to extinction that most countries forbid fishermen from catching them.
That’s not stopping a factory in China’s Zhejiang province from slaughtering 600 whale sharks per year, according to Hong Kong-based conservation group WildLifeRisk. The factory pays up to 200,000 yuan ($31,000) per whale shark (pdf), as WLR reports, and there’s now a global network of fishing boats that will sell them.
Why? Whale sharks feed the growing market for fish oil used in supplements and cosmetics sold in the US and Canada (paywall), reports the New York Times.