Sharks are amazing ocean predators, and they’re some of the most powerful creatures in the sea.

But 25% of shark species are currently listed as endangered, threatened or near threatened by extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Because sharks and rays are generally slow to reproduce, the constant onslaught of threats, including shark finning, fisheries bycatch and threats to the ocean ecosystem are causing severe declines in populations that are already hard to monitor.

While it is impossible to know how many individual animals are killed yearly due to illegal and unrecorded catch, it is estimated that up to 73 million sharks are killed annually by finning alone.