The campaign against an age-old culinary favorite in Hong Kong - shark's fin dimsum or soup - is finally making its mark.

In an effort to protect the endangered sharks, a national campaign was started over a year ago to re-orient Chinese nationals and foreigners away from their fascination with shark fin, which had its beginnings in Hong Kong.

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The trans-border World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) cheerfully announced that shark fins brought into the city have dropped by over 34.7 percent, from 8,285 tons in 2012 to only 5,412 tons last year.

The total volume of the re-export of these shark fins also declined by 17.5 percent from 2,428 tons to 2,003 tons in the same period, according to the Census and Statistics Department of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.

Re-export into mainland China dropped to a whopping 90 percent from 1,170 tons to only 114 tons at the end of 2013. Among the major importers of the delicacy, Vietnam has overtaken China.

Since 2007, the WWF, in partnership with various sectors in Hong Kong, launched a "Say NO to Shark Fin," in an effort to arrest the indiscriminate hunt for endangered sharks solely for its fins, a long-time delicacy in traditional Chinese cuisine.

In 1987, the demand for shark fin started to rise as a result of the growing affluence of families across China.

Shark fin is used for soups that are usually ordered at restaurants during grand celebrations like weddings.

Sharks are usually hunted indiscriminately and their fins are hacked off, after which they are tossed back into the sea to die or rot.

A single bowl of shark's fin soup could sell at US $100.00 (620.13 Yuan).

The WWF Hong Kong campaign took some time to kick off, but to date, it reports that 168 corporations in the city and 116 catering businesses have participated in the "No Shark Fin Corporate Pledge" and later participated in developing an 'alternative shark-free menu' program.

The current efforts of WWF are directly reaching at least 90,000 individuals whose taste for the old cuisine is slowly giving way to more alternative dining experience.

The Hong Kong government is also cooperating when it adopted a sustainable food consumption program during official functions last year.

However, Hong Kong's Harmonized System (HKHS) does not have a specific tracking option for shark species traded into the city, something that will need to be tweaked.

Hong Kong is also behind in the monitoring of trade of specific shark species in the recently expanded list by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The HK unit of the WWF also suggested to the HK government to implement the "identification of shark species that need to be tracked. Scientific identification, through DNA testing of randomly-sampled shark fins, could also be deployed for verification purposes."

Fifty percent of all shark fin traded globally pass through Hong Kong.

In 2012, reports indicate that 100 million sharks were slaughtered only for their fins.

Twenty species of sharks are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) with total shark population across the globe now down by 90 percent since monitoring began in 1972.