Ted Danson launches attack on British fish and chips over rare shark

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 15 Sep 08;

A leading Hollywood actor has attacked the traditional British dish of fish and chips for causing the near extinction of an endangered species of shark.

Ted Danson said the "fish" enjoyed by millions of Britons in their fish and chips could be "spiny dogfish", a rare species of shark that is on the World Conservation Union Criticially Endangered List.

The Cheers actor, who founded Oceana, the largest international group focused soley on ocean conservation, said the dogfish was once the most abundant shark species in the world but has been brought to the edge of extinction by over fishing.

The main fishing grounds for the spiny dogfish are in the North Sea, west of Scotland and the Celtic Sea.

The UK is the fourth biggest shark fishing nation in Europe, hauling in almost 8,000 metric tonnes of sharks and rays, the bulk of which comes from the Northeast Atlantic.

Mr Danson, said much of this catch, including the endangered shark species, is marketed as "rock salmon" and is ending up in our fish and chips.

He said: "In general we are over fishing all of our fisheries around the world. Cod, which used to be in your fish and chips, has become so over-fished that we cannot find enough so we are turning to something that is called 'rock salmon' but that is really the endangered shark species spiny dog fish.

"So, a lot of your fish and chips come from this species of shark. It used to be the most abundant shark in the ocean but now it is down to five per cent of what it used to be."

The European nations are the second biggest "fishing nation" for sharks and rays after Indonesia, taking almost 94,000 or 12 per cent of the global shark and ray catch in 2006. More than 10,000 tonnes of those catches were for sharks that are threatened according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List.

Mr Danson said current controls on shark fishing in Europe are "grossly inadequate".

However the actor did not urge British people to give up on the dish altogether, just to check that rock salmon is not in the ingredients and to join the campaign to try to increase controls on shark fishing around Europe.

He added: "I love fish and I love fish and chips. I am not going to stop eating fish and chips. Not eating fish and chips is not going to have an impact necessarily. What is needed is to become an activist to try to get the policy changed on shark fishing."

Mr Danson, who founded Oceana 20 years ago when he couldn't answer his daughter's question on why his local beach was closed for fishing, said 90 per cent of shark species in the world have already been wiped out.

He pointed out that sharks are a crucial part of the ocean eco-system but take much longer than fish to recover from over-fishing.

He said: "We could avert this disaster now. The alternative is we could could fish-out the oceans in our lifetime. How do we want to answer the question of our kids? This is something we could deal with now. Shame on us if we do not."

According to Oceana more than one hundred million sharks are killed by commercial fisheries every year. Approximately 50 million are caught unintentionally as "by-catch" and up to 73 million are caught for their fins used in "luxury" products like shark fin soup or for their liver, oil and cartilage which are used in cosmetic and dietary supplements.