Endangered shark meat keeps ending up on store shelves

A college seafood forensics class investigated some fishy labelling. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Sharks have been swimming in Earth's seas over 450 million years, but some struggling shark species may be ending up on grocery store shelves, in fish markets, and even sold online. Meat from shark species at risk of extinction is still available for sale in the United States, despite lawmaker's best efforts. "We found critically endangered sharks, including great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead, being sold in grocery stores, seafood markets, and online," said Dr. Savannah J. Ryburn, a marine ecologist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-author of a small study recently published in "Of the 29 samples, 93 percent were ambiguously labeled as'shark,' and one of the two products labeled at the species level was mislabeled." In the new study, a seafood forensic class at UNC bought 30 different shark products-19 raw steaks and 11 packages of shark jerky.