Costa Rica announces ban on hammerhead shark fishing
hammerhead shark pic

Despite being critically endangered, hammerhead sharks have been bought and sold in Costa Rica for years, with demand driven by shark fin soup.

Despite some conservation efforts in the past, the government has so far been heavily criticized for its lax approach to tackling hammerhead shark overfishing.

MEXICO CITY — Hammerhead shark fishing is now illegal in Costa Rica, thanks to President Rodrigo Chaves Robles signing a new executive order last month.

The decree prohibits the capture, transport, storage and sale of hammerhead sharks and their by-products, such as fins and teeth. Prohibited species include the smooth hammerhead shark ( Sphyrna zygaena ), the scalloped hammerhead shark ( Sphyrna lewini ) and the great hammerhead shark ( Sphyrna mokarran ).

Despite being critically endangered and protected under CITES Appendix II , hammerhead sharks have been bought and sold in Costa Rica for years. 

 “Of course I'm happy that hammerhead shark fishing has been banned. In reality, however, already in 2013, hammerhead sharks had been listed in CITES on the initiative of Costa Rica, therefore there was a duty to prohibit the marketing, extraction and everything related to hammerhead shark fishing. This has been our battle for the last ten years."

At that time, the hammerhead shark population in Costa Rica had declined by about 90 percent, according to Arauz.

Over the last decade, several presidents have wavered on the issue of protecting hammerhead sharks, partly because they were interested in safeguarding the fishing industry. In 2017, former president Luis Guillermo Solís issued a decree legalizing much of the shark trade; however, a few years later, this decree was annulled by the supreme court.

In 2018, the country established a hammerhead shark sanctuary in Golfo Dulce, a gulf at the southeastern tip of the country with high biodiversity, which protects wetlands used by the sharks for breeding.


A lawsuit that year alleged that the Costa Rican Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture (INCOPESCA) not only knew about the overfishing of hammerhead sharks, but actually accelerated it. Furthermore, some conservation groups have accused the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) of having authorized the export of thousands of hammerhead shark fins to China.

Most of the hammerhead sharks caught, the lawsuit showed, had not yet reached sexual maturity, making it difficult for their population to rebound. Invited to comment on the matter, MINAE and INCOPESCA did not respond.

Numerous times over the years, Costa Rica has abstained from voting on shark ban proposals at CITES meetings, further fueling protests from environmentalists that the country is good at talking about conservation while doing nothing about it.