Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 3 Nov 08;
OSLO - Rising demand for shark fin soup in Asia is spurring illegal fishing and contributing to a plunge in stocks, a report said on Monday.
The study, by the Australian government and the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, urged governments to crack down on illegal catches. Registered legal shark exports totalled $310 million worldwide in 2005, up from $237 million in 2002.
"As the world's demand for sharks continues to grow, shark populations are plummeting," said a statement accompanying the 57-page report. One in five shark species is considered threatened with extinction.
"The Asian market for shark fin is the key driver of shark fishing globally and is fuelling illegal fishing and high levels of legitimate shark fishing of questionable sustainability," it said.
Rising affluence in Asia was stoking demand for shark fin, widely viewed as a delicacy when shredded in soup. Main fin importers are China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan. The report said that only six of the top 20 shark-catching countries -- Taiwan, Mexico, the United States, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand -- had complied with a UN call in 2000 for all to work out plans for proper management of stocks.
Experts of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization will meet from Nov. 3-6 in Rome to review measures to protect sharks.
In Hong Kong, the world's biggest shark-fin market, the most commonly traded types were shortfin Mako, blue, sandbar, bull, hammerhead, silky and thresher sharks.
The study said it was impossible to say exactly how many sharks were illegally caught.
But a review of vessel seizures showed illegal catches were a problem around the world with "hotspots" off Central and South America and in the western and central Pacific.
Sharks were sometimes caught as a by-catch by tuna fishing vessels. In many cases, crews on illegal vessels slice the fins off sharks and dump the less valuable carcasses overboard.
Off Australia, for instance, 350 illegal vessels were intercepted in 2006-07, mostly Indonesian, with a total 1.6 tonnes of shark fin aboard.
The Traffic organisation is run by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the WWF conservation group.
Asian demand behind falling shark populations: report
Yahoo News 5 Nov 08;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Asian demand for shark fin soup is pushing the animal's population in the wild to new lows, the Australian government and a wildlife trade monitoring group said in a report released on Wednesday.
The report found that while more than one-fifth of shark species were already threatened with extinction, a lack of government control on overfishing and the problem of illegal fishing were further depleting the animal's numbers.
"The status of shark stocks continues to deteriorate," it said, adding that the predators were particularly vulnerable to overfishing because they produced few young and matured slowly.
Report co-author Glenn Sant of the wildlife group TRAFFIC said the extent of illegal and unreported fishing made it impossible to determine the total number of sharks being killed each year for their meat and fins.
"The problem is that illegal activities are always very difficult to estimate -- unless you apprehend people you don't know what's going on," he told AFP.
"We definitely know that there are many shark species that have been overfished -- and that includes in fisheries where they are managed (and intended) to be sustainable."
But he added: "There is no question that illegal activity around shark catching is threatening shark populations.
"As our knowledge gets better around the status of sharks it's an ever-worrying situation, it's not improving."
Sant, who is TRAFFIC's global marine programme leader, said the problem was compounded by a lack of regulation in most of the world.
But the overriding pressure on the animal was strong demand for shark fins, which are used to make a thick soup considered a delicacy in Asia, he said.
"The main reason for most of the shark catches around the world is the shark fin feeding into the Asian market," Sant said.
"We are not against the trade in shark fin, but what we are against is the over exploitation of shark."
Sant said the report's case study on Australia noted "enormous amounts of illegal vessels fishing in Australian waters and huge amounts of shark fin being taken".
The report's findings come ahead of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization meeting in Rome which will discuss how to monitor shark fisheries and the impact of illegal fishing on animal numbers.
