The organisation said the initiative aims to aid understaffed and under-equipped customs and other law-enforcement agencies by providing an easy to use identification tool that allows for quicker and more confident decision making on shark fin identification. ItвЂ™s quite an overwhelming task and due to these identification difficulties, it often results in shark fins from illegal sources not being identified as such,вЂќ said Burgener.ДЄccording to the organisation, global assessments estimate that between 26 million and 73 million sharks are traded each year - but the actual figure is likely to be far higher. вЂњAs if that was not difficult enough, they must correctly identify wildlife such as this alongside all the other contraband theyвЂ™re looking out for. Traffic fisheries trade expert Markus Burgener, who is based in SA, said law-enforcement officials around the world face the challenge of identifying shark fins in international trade to a species level to effectively enforce Cites laws. The printed fins represent a dozen regularly traded, 11 of them Cites-listed species, including great hammerhead, oceanic whitetip and silky sharks, created from 3D scans of real dried sharks fins. The replica fins created by wildlife NGO Traffic have been developed to be nearly impossible to differentiate from the real thing. The launch of the worldвЂ™s first 3D-printed replica shark fins will allow frontline law-enforcement officials to harness pioneering technology to combat the trafficking in shark fins - an illegal trade that is accelerating shark population declines globally.

First sharks 3d