Progress made on protecting sharks, groups say

Angela Doland, Associated Press Yahoo News 27 Nov 10;

PARIS – An international conservation conference in Paris made progress Saturday on protecting sharks but didn't do anything to save the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which has been severely overfished to feed the market for sushi in Japan, environmental groups said.

Delegates from 48 nations spent 11 days in Paris haggling over fishing quotas for the Atlantic and Mediterranean, poring over scientific data and pitting the demands of environmentalists against those of the fishing industry.

Conservation groups said delegates took steps in the right direction with moves to protect oceanic whitetip sharks and many hammerheads in the Atlantic, though they had hoped for more. Sharks were once an accidental catch for fishermen but have been increasingly targeted because of the growing market in Asia for their fins, an expensive delicacy used in soup.

WWF, Greenpeace, Oceana and the Pew Environment Group all strongly criticized the 2011 bluefin quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT, which manages tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean as well as species that have traditionally been accidental catches for tuna fishermen.

Environmental groups had hoped to see bluefin fishing slashed or suspended, saying illegal fishing is rampant in the Mediterranean and that scientists don't have good enough data to evaluate the problem.

The commission agreed to cut the bluefin fishing quota in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean from 13,500 to 12,900 metric tons annually — about a 4 percent reduction. It also agreed on measures to try to improve enforcement of quotas on bluefin, prized for its tender red meat.

Sergi Tudela, head of WWF Mediterranean's fisheries program, attacked the "measly quota reduction." Oliver Knowles, Greenpeace oceans campaigner, complained that "the word 'conservation' should be removed from ICCAT's name."

Russell F. Smith, representing the U.S. delegation, told The AP, "I think we made some progress. I wish we'd made more."

Meanwhile, the CNPMEM French fishing industry union praised the decision, saying "reason prevailed."

The international commission's committee of scientists had said keeping the status quo was acceptable, but environmentalists say there is so much unreported fishing that doing so is irresponsible.

Japan buys nearly 80 percent of the annual Atlantic bluefin catch. Top-grade sushi with fatty bluefin can go for as much as 2,000 yen ($24) a piece in high-end Tokyo restaurants.

While the focus of the Paris meeting was tuna, sharks have become a growing concern. Environmentalists say there are disastrously inadequate rules on shark capture.

Although there are elaborate international fishing regulations and quotas for other types of fish, sharks have long been an afterthought, even though some species have declined by 99 percent, Oceana said.

The international commission banned fishermen from catching and retaining oceanic whitetip sharks. It voted to limit the catch of several types of hammerhead sharks and to require countries to keep data on shortfin mako sharks.

Delegates also decided that Atlantic fishermen will now be required to carry special gear to remove hooks from sea turtles.

While the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas and other regional commissions regulate fishing, trade bans are handled by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. Environmentalists were sorely disappointed by a meeting of that body in March, where Atlantic bluefin and six species of sharks failed to get protection.

Hammerheads, other sharks protected at fisheries meet
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 27 Nov 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Half-a-dozen species of endangered sharks hunted on the high seas to satisfy a burgeoning Asian market for sharkfin soup are now protected in the Atlantic, a fisheries group decided Saturday.

Scalloped, smooth and great hammerheads, along with oceanic white tip, cannot be targeted or kept if caught accidentally, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) said.

Three other types of hammerhead are included in the ban: smalleye, scoophead, and whitefin.

However, a proposal submitted by the European Union to extend the same level of protection to the porbeagle shark, critically endangered in the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean, was shot down.

"Canada was adamant that they were not going to let its porbeagle fishery go," said Elizabeth Wilson, a marine scientist at Washington-based advocacy group Oceana.

The decisions on sharks follow 10 days of closed-door haggling at the 48-member ICCAT, which is poised to announce quotas and other measures on bluefin tuna.

ICCAT is charged with ensuring that commercial fisheries are sustainable, and has the authority to set quotas and restrictions.

At least 1.3 million sharks were harvested from the Atlantic in 2008 by industrial-scale fisheries unhampered by catch or size limits, according to a recent report.

The actual figure is likely several fold higher due to under-reporting.

To date, the only other shark species subject to a fishing ban in the Atlantic is the big-eye thresher, a measure passed last year.

"These decisions increase the chances that these species will continue to swim in the Atlantic," said Matt Rand, a shark expert with the Pew Environment Group.

"But there's a lot more work to be done. Fifty percent of open water sharks in the world are threatened with extinction," he said, citing the classification of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

A push by the United States to require that all sharks be brought back to shore whole failed to muster the needed consensus.

The measure would have boosted enforcement of a widely flouted international ban on finning, whereby dead or dying shark are dumped back into the sea after the choice morsel has been removed.

Another US proposal to establish quotas for the shortfin mako shark also fell short.

"Half the countries at the meeting were opposed," said Wilson.

While willing to ban catches of certain species that are already in sharp decline, these nations do not want to set a precedent of establishing quotas for sharks with relatively healthy populations, she explained.

There are no multinational limits on shark fishing anywhere in the world.

ICCAT did, however, call for data collection on the shortfin mako to help scientists measure population levels.

It also voted a measure requiring commercial fishermen to remove hooks and netting from accidentally caught sea turtles, and to keep records.

North Atlantic populations of the oceanic white tip have declined by 70 percent, and hammerheads by more than 99 percent, according to IUCN.

Sharks have reigned at the top of the ocean food chain for hundreds of millions of years.

But the consummate predators are especially vulnerable to industrial-scale overfishing because they mature slowly and produce few offspring.

Tens of millions of the open-water predators are extracted from global seas every year.

Regional studies have shown that when shark populations crash the impact cascades down through the food chain, often in unpredictable and deleterious ways.