15/10/2026
📑 NEW STUDY: Hasan et al. revealed the true species in products often labelled ambiguously as ‘shark’.
🌏 Location
Western Australia
🤔 The issue
Poor labelling of shark products is a global problem that hampers sustainable fisheries and limits consumer choice.
👩🏽🔬 What did the researchers do?
The team – from Murdoch University and Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development – conducted a detailed assessment of mislabelling and species composition in cooked ‘shark’ products from Western Australian fish and chip shops.
COI sequencing, a technique to identify species through their DNA, was used to investigate the species in cooked ‘shark’ fillets.
💡 What did they find?
The team identified 11 shark, 2 chimaera and 3 teleost species in 167 products from 132 shops.
Most products were labelled ambiguously (56%) or mislabelled (35%), and only 26% provided origin information. Products labelled ‘shark’ (53%) mostly contained dusky, gummy or whiskery sharks.
For species-specific labels, most products (92%) were advertised as ‘gummy’ or ‘bronze whaler’ and identified as gummy, whiskery or dusky sharks. Because these species have similar prices, mislabelling likely reflects complex commercial fishing operations and supply chains.
Overall, species composition differed from products tested in other Australian states. Only one sample involved a species in a ‘threatened’ category under Australian IUCN assessments.
👍 Any recommendations?
Cooked shark products sold in Western Australian fish and chip shops showed a high incidence of ambiguous labelling and mostly contained dusky, gummy and whiskery sharks. These findings underscore the need to strengthen seafood labelling legislation in Australia.
