‘We sell it in secret, like drugs’: Brazil’s appetite for shark meat puts species under threat

One of the biggest consumers in a global market worth an estimated 2bn, trade in the cheap fish in the south American country is booming. But worried conservationists say most people do not realise they are eating shark

• Photographs by Avener Prado

The bright blue skies and calm waters of the estuary belie rough conditions at sea, and there is no sign of activity among the colourful fishing boats moored around the harbour of Cananeia, a sleepy fishing town 160 miles south of Sao Paulo.

On the wharf, however, a delivery of frozen fish from Uruguay has just arrived and a few men in white gumboots are busy unloading pallets of beheaded specimens labelled Galeorhinus galeus - school shark.