Firms Want Eaters Hooked On Shark Meat

In recent but more barbaric times, sharks caught as a by-catch of a tuna haul had their dorsal fins sliced off and were dumped back into the sea for a slow and agonizing death. While the fins of blue sharks, or yoshikiri-zame, are extremely marketable as an ingredient in gourmet shark fin soup, the same cannot be said for shark meat, which tends to give off a pungent odor. But amid mounting criticism and restrictions against the finning practice, fishing vessels are now bringing back the entire sharks. The question is: What can they do with the 95 percent of the shark that no one seems to want? The food industry is trying to come up with answers...