Rob Stewart, The Telegraph 21 Feb 08;
In August of 1999, I was a 19-year-old photographer on assignment to photograph sharks in the Galapagos Islands. Instead of finding sharks in all their majesty underwater, I ended up cutting dead and dying sharks from kilometres of illegally set long lines with thousands of baited hooks.
The experience launched me on a journey to uncover why there was such a huge demand for sharks, even in the most protected national parks on Earth.
The simple answer was the growing demand for shark fin soup.
Through much of Asia, shark fin soup is a status symbol of wealth and served as a sign of respect. A single pound of shark fin can sell for more than £150.
Shark bodies don't have substantial value, so fishermen started finning: discarding the bodies and keeping only the fins.
The huge demand for fins, and poor fishing regulations have decimated shark populations in every ocean on Earth.
Studies from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada have shown that shark populations, as well as populations of all large predators in the oceans have dropped an estimated 90 per cent in the last 30 years.
Some species of shark, such as the tiger, bull and dusky shark have dropped by more than 95 per cent.
I realised that sharks were going to be wiped out, largely because nobody knew what was going on in the oceans, and if they did know, they didn't care because they were afraid of sharks.
In 2002 I set out to make Sharkwater, a film that would bring the public closer to sharks than ever before. I thought if people could understand sharks, and see them as beautiful, necessary animals, they would fight for their protection.
I joined Captain Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, in Los Angeles. Watson's ship, the Ocean Warrior, was going to Cocos, Costa Rica, by invitation from the Costa Rican president to deter poaching within the ill-protected marine reserve.
Through my journey with Paul, we collided with a pirate finning boat, were charged with attempted murder, exposed corrupt governments, fled for our lives from machine-gun toting coast guards, and started filming ourselves to keep ourselves out of prison. This journey changed the film from a beautiful shark movie to a human drama spanning four years, 15 countries, that nearly ended my life.
Currently only a couple of dozen countries, including those in the EU, have banned shark finning, mostly in the last five years. As with any fishery, there is a lag time between the exploitation and the realisation and acknowledgement by the public.
Only in 2004 was the first fish placed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Some species of sharks have recently been listed on CITES, and they happen to be the most recognisable - the great white - or the likeable whale and basking sharks, which are large filter feeders that support thriving tourist industries.
Protection is much more difficult to acquire for other less charismatic, but equally or more gravely endangered shark species such as the oceanic whitetip shark, whose populations are estimated to have declined by 99 per cent in the Gulf of Mexico.
Our failure to protect the oceans is largely because what's out of sight is out of mind. We don't see underwater exploitation the same way we see it on land, and thus most of our concern and environmental policy lies above the surface.
We waste an estimated 54 billion pounds of fish every year, and fisheries worldwide are expected to collapse by 2048.
We're destroying species in the ocean in ways that could never happen on land simply because we wouldn't stand for it.
We are, however, capable of great change if made aware of the issue, as demonstrated with whaling.
The situation for whales has turned around through public pressure, forcing the International Whaling Commission into existence. Sharks can be saved only if the public knows what's happening.
Recent studies from Dalhousie University suggest that the first early warning signs of ecosystem collapse are now present due to the removal of large sharks and predators from their environment.
This scenario is similar in reaction to the "top down" phenomenon of removing predators demonstrated on the west coast of North America with the sea otter. Sea otters were hunted for their pelts, which removed pressure from their main food source, the urchins.
Urchin populations exploded, eating the kelp forests that were the breeding grounds of the pacific herring. Without the herring, populations of whales, dolphins, sea lions, sharks and large fish were nearly eliminated.
Similarly, Ransom Myers and Julia Baum's recent study [Science, March 2007] has shown that the removal of sharks from the Atlantic coast has caused some of their food populations, such as smaller sharks, skates and rays, to explode in numbers, decimating populations of shellfish, and wiping out century old fisheries.
This is just the beginning in a cascade of events analogous but far greater than the otter/kelp example from the west coast.
The difference is, we've removed the top predator from every ocean - the predator that has been shaping the oceans for more than 400 million years and has seen life on Earth rebuild five times - and the food web that will be affected includes humans.
I set out to make Sharkwater because I know that humans' sustainable use of the planet is inevitable, or we will cease to exist. Ninety-nine per cent of all species that ever existed are now extinct.
Humans have lived on Earth less than a million years, a small fraction of the time other successful species have.
Just as humanity has evolved in the past towards cultural and racial equality, humans are at another crossroads where their evolution as a species towards a more sustainable use of the planet is a necessity. As bleak as the situation seems, there is hope. Examples of fisheries that have recovered and become viable again exist the world over, and examples of sustainable use of the oceans have existed throughout history.
We do however need a renewed view of the ocean - not as a toxic waste dump, but as a source for life and an essential part of the Earth as an ecosystem. Life on land depends on life in the oceans. Seventy per cent of the oxygen we breathe comes from life in the oceans that sits below sharks in the food chain.
By killing sharks, we're destroying the top predator from the most important ecosystem for our own survival. Just as awareness was gained for whales, and the consumption of tiger, panda or elephant is now taboo, sharks can be saved.
Despite the seemingly bleak situation, our hope lies in the majesty of the Earth itself. Our home is a single planet amongst billions that supports life so diverse in ecosystems that life has perpetuated for 3.5 billion years.
Now evolution has sculpted a species [humans] so sophisticated that it can destroy the natural world upon which it depends… or awaken, and choose to live in balance.
# Rob Stewart is the director/star of the award-winning new documentary Sharkwater, which opens in selected cinemas nationwide on 22nd February. For more information, go to www.sharkwater.com .
