[♪ foreboding music playing]
[Mariana van Zeller] Sharks,
for many, there's no greater fear.
The thought of getting attacked by one of these apex predators
is the stuff of nightmares, and of movie scripts.
Since Jaws premiered 50 years ago,
Hollywood has known sharks inspire
a unique kind of terror.
I've been afraid of sharks since I was a kid.
And now, I'm preparing to swim with them.
[speaker] You breathe nice and easy.
[van Zeller] But the real danger...
is what the world might look like without them.
The global shark and ray population
has decreased by an estimated 70%
over the past 50 years.
In the fin trade, of the species
that scientists have been able to study,
more than two-thirds are at risk of extinction.
Most sharks are being caught for shark fin soup,
a traditional Chinese dish
that symbolizes wealth and status.
The trafficking of shark fins
is worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year...
enough money to draw the attention
of organized crime groups
with tentacles that stretch from China
to Mexico's cartel land
and all the way back to the United States.
This is a journey to find out how
and why so many sharks are being killed,
-and it begins... -Okay, begin.
[van Zeller] ...with a leap of faith.
[♪ singer vocalizing]
[van Zeller] This area off the coast of Florida...
is known as a hotspot for sharks.
And just moments after I hit the water,
one approaches.
[♪ tense music playing]
An eight foot lemon shark.
So close, I can touch it.
Lemon sharks are vulnerable to extinction.
Their number has been cut in half, if not more,
over the last 50 years.
That was incredible.
[Dr. Catherine Macdonald] Gorgeous male lemon shark.
So cool he was.
[Dr. Macdonald] Was it different from what you expected?
I know you were a little nervous.
Yeah. It didn't feel dangerous at all.
It didn't feel scary.
My dive partner,
Dr. Catherine Macdonald,
is a renowned marine biologist and shark researcher.
[Dr. Macdonald] We've recently recorded
the first presumed shark extinction
caused by humans, but we're expecting that
there are probably going to be more of those in the future.
Can you give me a sense of the number of sharks
are killed, that are killed every year?
The best available estimate
that scientists have right now is about
a hundred million sharks a year.
A hundred million sharks a year?
Experts say it's an unsustainable decline
and is especially alarming because the loss of sharks
could trigger a domino effect throughout the food chain,
with overpopulation of smaller fish
leading to the collapse of coral reefs
and major parts of the ocean's ecosystem.
In 2022, alarmed by the downward spiral of sharks,
the US government made it illegal to possess,
sell, or transport nearly any type of shark fin.
With enormous profits at stake,
I suspect the fin trade in the US
has not entirely disappeared.
So, what are you guys using to film?
[Titi] Um, there is
undercover glasses that we can use.
[van Zeller] Oh, that's great. And that-that's the camera.
And, so, that's the camera right there.
-[van Zeller] Can I see it? -And then
-here's a button camera. -Oh, the button cam.
Yeah, so, the camera's inside the button?
[Titi] Exactly.
[van Zeller] In the Sunset Park neighborhood
of Brooklyn, I'm working
with a team of undercover journalists
who are investigating the black market
for shark fins in the US.
What's the cover story? What are we going in as?
So if you walk in as an American,
they might get a little suspicious.
-Mm-hmm. -You work for YPF,
which is the Argentine state-run,
uh, petroleum company.
So, it's not like we're going to go in there
and it's on the menu or something that you--
No, no. It would definitely not be the menu.
When we go in, it'll be a private room.
-Mm-hmm. -And they'll--
we have a six-course banquet.
And that's six courses in which there's a possibility
that one of them will actually be shark fin?
Yes, correct.
[van Zeller] Our party has requested
a VIP banquet
at a cost of a 1,000 dollars per person.
There's no telling if the restaurant
will actually serve shark.
But money has a way of opening doors.
Shark fin soup originated around 1,000 years ago
as a delicacy eaten by China's elite.
But the country's economic rise in the 1980s
and 90s gave birth to a boom in demand.
Despite a steep price tag,
the soup became popular at formal events
like weddings and banquets.
It's Sunday afternoon, and the restaurant is packed.
Not a single empty table.
[van Zeller] We're led to a small private room in the back.
[van Zeller] In keeping with the cover story,
I'm speaking Spanish...
...hoping to create as little suspicion as possible.
After an appetizer of chicken feet,
a big soupy bowl arrives at the table.
[van Zeller] If this truly is shark fin soup,
then the noodles being served are not noodles at all.
They are thin fibers of cartilage
processed from shark fins.
[van Zeller] Mm-hmm.
[van Zeller] So, I actually was able
to smuggle out some, uh, shark fin noodles.
At least they say it's shark fin.
They could always be overcharging
for regular noodles.
But inside the restaurant,
they definitely said this was shark fin.
We're going to take it to a lab to get analyzed
and also to try to figure out what kind of shark it is
because we're not sure.
If they're real, it's shocking that fins are still being sold
and served in America two years after the ban.
And if this trade is still happening,
I want to know where these fins might be coming from,
how they're getting into the country,
and who's profiting.
The waiter said the sharks
are coming from south of the border,
so that's where I'm headed...
to Mazatlán, the biggest fishing port
on the west coast of Mexico...
where fishermen like Germán ply their trade.
So, they've been here for about 12 hours,
these hooks.
At the end of summer,
when shark fishing season begins
in this region, Germán, his brother,
and his uncle navigate the open seas
in this small panga boat.
It's a seven mile line.
The ocean is so big that it's impossible
to know exactly where the sharks will be,
but his grandfather, his father,
they've all been fishermen.
So they have this sort of natural instinct
as to know where the sharks will be.
[van Zeller] So, he's saying this one is big,
and it's going to be a dangerous one,
-so we have to be careful. -[speaking Spanish]
[van Zeller] Because they actually attack, he's saying.
[Germán speaking Spanish]
[♪ serene music playing]
Oh, look.
[♪ vocalizing]
[van Zeller] Sharks tend to grow slowly.
Some species, like the great white,
can't reproduce until they're about 30 years old,
which is why it's so hard for them to bounce back
from overfishing.
In Mexico, regulations dictate
that sharks can only be caught in season.
And highly protected species,
-shark or otherwise... -Aw, it's a turtle,
so they're trying to release it.
...must be released if caught.
But experts say it's nearly impossible
to police these laws,
and all signs point to illegal overfishing.
A shark was able to eat half of the body of this fish,
which is pretty big.
Combined, legal and illegal fishing
have killed so many sharks
that entire populations near the coast
have been decimated.
Fishermen like Germán now have to travel five hours from land
to try their luck in the open waters of the Pacific.
Usually, it's about a $500 investment.
That's how much they put into each time they come out here.
So sometimes he says it's really hard
when they go back with nothing.
It's a risky business financially and physically.
[van Zeller] Oh, wow, so that's definitely a shark.
Wow, this is putting up quite the fight.
[grunts with effort]
So they keep doing this and checking every single hook.
Over 300 hooks like this out there.
They check hook after hook
to see how many sharks have taken the bait.
[van Zeller] This one is dead as well.
Many sharks, when caught on long fishing lines
for extended periods, suffocate or die from stress.
That means while endangered species
must be released if caught,
many are dead before they can even be hauled in.
Germán is operating legally.
Catching these sharks helps him sustain his family.
But knowing how shark populations are crashing,
it's hard to watch as shark after shark
is hauled out of the water.
More or less a sort of a medium size shark,
uh, brings about $25 dollars.
So that's, that's not a lot.
And that's why they have to catch a lot of shark
for this actually to work out for them.
-No. -No?
Recent reports reveal Mexican cartels
muscling their way into the fishing industry,
taking over fleets of boats, factories,
and even fishing cooperatives.
And with complete disregard for rules,
conservation quotas, and sustainable practices.
But in Mexico,
answering questions about the cartel
can get you killed.
[van Zeller] So these are blacktip sharks.
They're a near threatened species.
And in just one outing, in under 24 hours,
they were able to get 36 of them.
[Germán speaks Spanish]
[van Zeller] First, they cut off the fins.
[Germán speaks Spanish]
[van Zeller] And then they have buyers that come in
to buy both the meat and the fins,
but it's different buyers for each.
From the fins, the back fin is actually the most valuable
'cause it's got a lot of the fiber that they're looking for.
Ultimately, it will be cartilage like this
that's processed into noodles for shark fin soup,
like the dish I was served in New York.
This white van pulling into the beach,
Germán just told us that these are the buyers.
While Germán can sell shark meat for $2 a pound
he can sell fins for ten times that amount.
This explains the brutal allure of finning,
cutting the fins off sharks
and dumping their bodies at sea.
Around the world,
environmentalists have pushed legislation
to end the practice
and in many countries, like Mexico,
shark fishermen are required
to bring the entire animal to shore.
There's 400 kilos.
So that's $800 they made today just on the shark meat.
The fins will stay with Germán
until a middleman he knows comes to buy them.
One thing that is well-known is that this whole area,
this whole port area, is controlled,
fully controlled by the Sinaloa cartel.
We've been hearing that they've been getting more involved
in the fishing trade.
But again, it's a very sensitive subject,
so they didn't really want to talk about it.
It can get them in serious trouble if they do.
You see that yellow building over there?
It's a hotel, and that's actually
where El Chapo was captured.
He was inside that hotel.
It's been eight years since Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán,
the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel,
was extradited to the United States.
In his absence, the cartel split into factions
that have maintained an uneasy peace.
[news reporter] In custody now,
76-year-old Zambada Garcia,
"El Mayo," who is said to have co-founded
the Sinaloa Cartel with El Chapo.
[van Zeller] But just before I arrived in Mexico,
another cartel boss, El Mayo, was arrested,
setting off waves of killings among Sinaloa factions.
The US State Department has now issued
a "do not travel" warning for this region.
And the closer we get to Sinaloa's capital, Culiacán,
the more dangerous it becomes.
[♪ Spanish song playing]
But as luck would have it,
the shark fin broker we made contact with
is located north of Culiacán,
meaning we'll have to hug the coast
and do whatever we can to avoid the cartel war.
[♪ tense music playing]
So we just arrived in La Reforma,
which is a small fishing village
just about two hours north of Culiacán.
We're here to meet a guy who's a shark fin buyer
that buys fins all over the country.
[flies buzzing]
[van Zeller] Don Beto is the oldest of four brothers
who make their living as shark fin brokers.
Wow. It's, uh, I mean, dozens,
dozens of bags of shark fins here.
[van Zeller] So this is the scientific name
of the shark that's in here.
So this is blue shark.
They're actually quite big fins.
Bigger than the ones we've been seeing.
Basically, he's saying to send to China.
[van Zeller] That would mean Don Beto's collection of fins
is worth roughly two million dollars in China.
But first, it has to get there.
This is how they cut it when it's being exported.
Oh, wow, he's showing me the fiber.
This is the fiber.
So this is the best quality shark fin there is.
-It's-- -Chato .
Chato. Lemon shark. Chato.
[van Zeller] It's the same type of shark
I swam with in Florida.
[van Zeller] Don Beto's words echo beliefs
that often exist in communities
where animal conservation affects livelihoods.
[van Zeller] These days, Don Beto says
his most pressing problem
is with CITES, the international group
that regulates the trade of endangered animals.
To ship fins overseas, he needs permits.
But these permits have become difficult to obtain.
With exports to Asia bottlenecked,
Don Beto says some people have begun
buying his fins with an eye to smuggling them
over the border into the United States.
[van Zeller] It seems this is the point in the supply chain,
where what is largely a legal trade becomes criminal.
[♪ electronic music playing]
[van Zeller] Don Beto won't connect us
to his buyers,
so I'm headed to the Yucatán city of Mérida,
where I've been tipped off about a smuggling operation.
[♪ upbeat music playing]
At first glance, this quiet colonial city
seems a strange base of operations
for shark trafficking.
But coastal access, good infrastructure,
and relative obscurity
could be an attractive combination
for criminal groups.
-Hello. -[Bin] Hi.
So Bin, right? Is what you want me to call you?
And you're Mr. Wu, the famous Mr. Wu, right?
We've hooked up with some other members
of the same undercover team I worked with in New York.
They've spent the past four months in Mérida,
looking into a Chinese smuggling operation.
[van Zeller] Because of their ongoing investigative work,
we're obscuring their identities.
And shark fins is possibly one of them?
And, so far, he believes this story?
So you guys are going to be filming undercover?
And so that's who I am, your girlfriend?
-Okay. Holding hands. -Okay?
-Honey? -Yeah.
Oh, I should probably take off my...
Yeah.
-The wedding ring. -[all laugh]
And then when we get there, do we, do we, do you get,
do we know where we're meeting him already?
All this is going to happen today?
[♪ ominous music playing]
[♪ Spanish song playing]
-[Fin Broker] Hello. -[Mr. Wu] Hi.
-[van Zeller] Maria. -[Fin Broker] Maria.
-Hola. -[van Zeller] Hola.
Posing as would-be investors,
we've come to the house of a man
these undercover journalists have identified
as a player in Mérida's fin trade.
-Oh... -Thank you.
True to form,
he's cooking up shark fin soup
on the stove.
-Oh, wow. -[laughs]
So it's a bag full of shark fins.
Different parts.
[van Zeller] These fins have been dried
and cut, just like those
I saw in Don Beto's storage.
Wow.
[van Zeller] This is what we've been waiting for,
an opening to learn how fins are smuggled north.
[van Zeller] He tells us his ability
to transport fins is limited,
but he knows of other groups able to move vast quantities.
[van Zeller] In Mexico, it's a safe bet
that anyone able to move contraband
inside shipping containers to the US
is also going to have connections to a cartel.
I know from many years of reporting
on Mexican criminal groups,
that smuggling routes are rarely confined
to just drugs or weapons.
Cartels are always looking for new revenue streams
and in recent years,
they've turned their attention to the ocean.
[van Zeller] In early 2024,
Minerva Pérez Castro,
the head of Mexico's largest fishing trade group,
accused the cartels of muscling their way
into all aspects of the industry.
And in July of that year,
she followed up with this press conference
denouncing illegal fishing.
[van Zeller] But in Mexico, there are
few things more dangerous than exposing
the inner workings of a cartel.
Within hours, she was assassinated.
Her car riddled with 30 bullets.
[van Zeller] Her death has had a chilling effect here.
Reminding everyone, from fishermen
to industry leaders,
that there's a price to pay for speaking out
against criminal groups.
Nobody I've met in Mexico
has dared to connect cartels to the shark fin trade.
But if all roads lead to the cartel,
it's time to talk with someone directly involved.
So we're driving to Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa.
I've reported extensively from Sinaloa in the past
and through my contacts,
I've been able to connect
with a high-level operative.
The problem, he's demanding we meet in the capital,
Culiacán, the one place we've been trying to avoid.
Things are really hot right now.
There's a lot of infighting
between different factions
of the Sinaloa Cartel.
So we're driving in a convoy of five cars.
But, yeah, everybody is a little bit on edge,
particularly now, things are...
have become really violent here.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[♪ tense music playing]
So we're meeting with some cartel members
who we've heard are involved in the fishing trade.
Because things are very hot right now in Culiacán,
we were trying to convince them to meet us at our hotel
so we could talk to them there.
But they just told us that they don't feel comfortable
moving around the city,
and so we have to go meet them
in a stash house.
There is a lot of infighting in the city happening
between the two factions,
between Los Chapitos' and El Mayo's faction.
Driving around the city
and going to one of these factions' stash house is,
is, uh, you know, not-not something
that makes us all very comfortable.
-Far from it. -[automatic gunfire]
These streets are now ground zero
for cartel warfare in Mexico.
[newscaster] Townspeople in Culiacán
are having to adjust to a new reality.
[newscaster 2] Shootings regularly break out
in the city.
Corpses bearing marks of torture
dumped by the side of the road at night.
We're going to start entering the neighborhood
where the stash house is at soon.
They've asked us to keep our windows open
because they have lookouts,
halcones, as they call them here,
all around this neighborhood,
telling them who's coming in and out.
[van Zeller] Yes. Of course.
Just to confirm again, no walkie-talkies, no radios?
[van Zeller] Making things even more volatile,
local sicarios are on the lookout
for state police and government special forces,
who've now entered the city with orders
to hunt down cartel members.
Oh, wow. So it's right here, actually.
So maybe just cameras down.
[♪ tense music playing]
It's not a gate. It's a garage.
[garage door squeaking]
We're met by three heavily armed men
who bring us inside a safe house.
Yeah.
Okay.
No.
Hmm. Okay.
[speaking Spanish]
Okay. They're telling us... I only have one more question.
They're telling us we have to wrap up,
because the government is around us.
There's military coming.
I've held back on one difficult question,
but it's now or never.
He doesn't like my question.
-[man speaking Spanish] -[cocks gun]
[van Zeller] And neither does the guy behind him
who just cocked his weapon.
[♪ tense music playing]
Okay. They're saying the government is close by,
and we have to be fast.
Okay. Okay. Yeah.
[turn indicators beeping]
We made a left?
[man] Yeah. And then maybe a right.
I think that was the fastest interview I've ever done.
[chuckles] It was about 10 minutes.
But he knew that fins were being shipped
to the United States
in cargo ships from Guadalajara.
So I think that was surprising.
Things got very, very heated in the room when I asked
if they had any information about the death
of Minerva Pérez Castro.
Yeah, you could feel the tension.
He was not happy with that question at all.
Just another day in Culiacán.
♪ It was you ♪
♪ With all the lies ♪
♪ Damn, you tried ♪
♪ To satisfy me ♪
♪ It was you ♪
[van Zeller] I know from my Mexico trip
that fins are being shipped
to the US aboard container ships.
And I know from the staff at the restaurant in New York
that they buy their fins in Los Angeles.
So the next logical stop is here.
[Ray Hernandez] Ready, buddy? Let's go.
So all these are products that enter the United States?
[Hernandez] These are all products that came
into the United States from all over the world.
Alright. Find it. [tapping]
Good boy.
[van Zeller] The US Fish and Wildlife Service
faces a daunting task,
monitoring millions of shipments
passing through the Port of Los Angeles each year,
any one of which could conceal illegal wildlife products.
Today is training day for Braxton and his handler,
wildlife inspector Ray Hernandez.
What I've done is I've concealed the items inside
to match what we would find in a normal situation.
So it's wrapped in tape.
It's concealed with clothing
and other items to try to mask the smell.
So this is shark fin right here.
Ooh. The smell. I can...
-Right? Isn't that funny? -You could tell. Yes.
[Hernandez] So even with all that tape on there...
[van Zeller] Right. You can definitely smell it.
[Hernandez] ...you can smell it.
[Denise Larison] I just had some information come in today
that, right now,
we're looking at $600 to $800 a pound.
-[van Zeller] Just shark fins. -[Larison] Just shark fins.
The harder the species to get,
the more rare, the higher the price.
[van Zeller] Denise Larison oversees operations
for Fish and Wildlife here.
Her team intercepts all kind of shark products,
including the type of fins Don Beto said
he supplies to smugglers.
The skin has been removed from this one.
[Larison] Yes, because the traffickers,
the smugglers, they know that
it's more difficult to identify
if they skin it.
So this is another example of
if you just see this at a glance,
you might not even realize that that is shark fin.
No, it almost looks like dried mushrooms
-or something, right? -[Larison] Yes. Mm-hmm.
So is this happening mainly here in LA
or is this a nationwide or worldwide problem?
This is definitely, hands down, a worldwide problem.
Most of the fins are coming into the United States
from these Central and South American countries,
places like Mexico, Nicaragua.
A lot of it is transiting through the United States,
going out to Southeast Asia and that area.
[van Zeller] Because shipping routes
from Central America to Asia
often run through US ports,
Fish and Wildlife make valiant efforts
to catch smugglers
and curb the trade from the supply side.
But many conservationists agree that saving sharks
also requires reducing demand,
and that means changing the habits of consumers.
[van Zeller] Public awareness campaigns
and vegetarian alternatives to shark fin noodles
have made an impact on consumption
among young people in China.
But throughout Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore,
and mainland China,
which are collectively responsible
for 90% of global shark fin imports,
it is still legal to order shark fin soup in restaurants.
And back in the US where it's not legal,
the dish I was served would suggest
that a black market is in full swing.
That's if it was actually shark fin.
[Dr. Demian Chapman] We took these noodles,
and we actually were able to extract DNA,
even though they've been cooked and processed.
-Wow. -And we actually
sequenced a little bit.
And I'm about to put them in there.
-Okay. -And see what they are.
[van Zeller] Dr. Demian Chapman
is an acclaimed shark expert
whose team has developed the genetic tools
to identify the species of shark from tissue samples.
[Dr. Chapman] Alright. We have a result.
So this is a scalloped hammerhead shark
and a silky shark.
-So there are two species? -Yeah.
[van Zeller] The noodles from the restaurant
come not from one but from two types of shark.
A silky shark, a species classified as vulnerable,
and a scalloped hammerhead, which is critically endangered,
just one step away from extinction in the wild.
It's remarkable, and it's,
i-it's disgraceful that you can just go
and so easily pick this up in New York City.
Tha-that really is a-a disgrace.
[Dr. Macdonald] I'm positive that in most major cities,
you could find a place to purchase shark fin soup.
And how does that make you feel?
[sighs]
It's complicated for me,
because I care a lot about sharks,
but I also care about the people who rely on sharks
as a resource around the world.
Ah, that's interesting. That's not the perspective I was,
I was thinking you would have.
We would like to stop criminal trade activities
but, in a lot of cases,
we're not willing to replace it with opportunities.
And so criminalizing behaviors
that people are engaging in so that they can survive
or so that they can send their kids to school
is never going to succeed unless there's an alternative.
[van Zeller] That's the challenge
in all black markets,
creating job opportunities and new revenue streams
that offer those involved a way out.
In any given year,
the odds of a person being killed by a shark
are less than one in a billion.
Incredibly rare.
But the odds that our oceans and fisheries
will be decimated if sharks disappear
are virtually certain.
[Dr. Macdonald] When you think about sharks
and their evolutionary history,
420 million years or more on this planet,
that means that they are older than trees.
They are older than the rings of Saturn.
Sharks have been an important part
of our planet for so long,
and now their fate is in our hands.