Costa Rica could soon face formal international scrutiny over the way it authorizes exports of silky shark products, a species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This week, the convention’s Animals Committee — its standing body of scientific experts on fauna — is weighing whether to place Costa Rica under a “review of significant trade,” a mechanism CITES applies when it doubts that a member state’s trade in a protected species is supported by adequate scientific evidence that the harvest will not threaten the species in the wild.
The proceeding stems from a report submitted by the Centro de Rescate de Especies Marinas Amenazadas (CREMA), a Costa Rican marine conservation organization, with backing from the German government. According to the report directly challenges the scientific basis of the Non-Detriment Finding that the Costa Rican Fisheries and Aquaculture Institute (Incopesca) uses to justify continued exports — the assessment every CITES party must produce to demonstrate that removing a listed species from the wild is sustainable.
The volumes at stake are considerable. The CREMA report states that Costa Rica accounts for roughly 82 percent of the world’s silky shark product exports, and that over the past five years the country has shipped more than 2,000 tonnes (4.4 million pounds) of meat and close to 1,000 tonnes (2.2 million pounds) of fins.
CREMA director Daniel Arauz described sharks as apex predators whose role in the ocean mirrors that of the jaguar and the puma in Costa Rica’s forests, warning that removing them from the food chain triggers a cascade that allows prey populations to swell and throws the wider marine system out of balance.
For those unfamiliar with the mechanism, a review of significant trade is one of the principal tools CITES uses to police trade in the Appendix II species it lists as vulnerable to overexploitation. If the Animals Committee votes to open the review, convention specialists would spend the coming months auditing Costa Rica’s export records, landing data and fishing permits to determine whether its silky shark trade meets the treaty’s obligations.
Reviews that surface serious shortcomings can produce recommendations that escalate from corrective management measures to a call for other parties to suspend imports from the country until it demonstrates compliance — an outcome that would, in practice, halt the trade.
The dispute is not new. Silky sharks (Carcharhinus falciformis) have held CITES Appendix II protection since 2017, which bars their international trade without a permit certifying that the catch was legal and sustainable. The domestic legal fight runs deeper still. In June 2023, the First Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled that Incopesca’s 2017 decision reclassifying several threatened shark species as commercial — the designation that kept exports flowing — had no valid legal foundation, affirming that the animals are wildlife.
Exports continued nonetheless. CREMA has documented that in the year following the ruling, between June 2023 and May 2024, Costa Rica shipped roughly 734 tons (1.6 million pounds) of silky shark meat worth about $1.87 million and some 45 tons (99,000 pounds) of fins worth close to $5 million, the disparity reflecting how much more valuable fins are by weight.
The question has moved repeatedly through the domestic courts. In September 2025, the Contentious Administrative Tribunal issued a preliminary precautionary measure halting exports of silky shark, three thresher shark species and the grey reef shark, in a case brought by environmental attorney Walter Brenes.
The following month the tribunal reversed course, revoking that measure and declining to grant the precautionary order, citing the arguments of the State and Incopesca regarding existing technical studies and the Non-Detriment Findings; Brenes said he would appeal.
Earlier this month he returned to the courts with a fresh request to stop thresher shark exports, pointing to the species’ recent listing under Appendix I of the Convention on Migratory Species and to a United States government report that flagged Costa Rica for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and for lacking scientific observers to verify which species are actually being landed at sea.
Taken together — a Supreme Court ruling, contested court orders, international criticism and now a possible CITES review, all arriving within roughly three years — the sequence points to a matter that has outgrown a purely domestic policy disagreement. It also lands squarely against the conservation reputation Costa Rica has spent decades building and that draws a large portion of its visitors.
