Brussels, 24/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - More than 1.3 million sharks, many belonging to species that are listed as being threatened with extinction, were killed by industrial fishing vessels in the Atlantic Ocean in 2008, claims NGO Oceana in a report published on Monday 22 November on the sidelines of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meeting. Oceana estimates that the real number of sharks caught could be far higher given the poor quality of publication of data for this fishery.
“Sharks are virtually unmanaged at the international level,” said Elizabeth Griffin Wilson, marine scientist and fisheries campaign manager at Oceana. “ICCAT has a responsibility to protect … our ocean's top predators,” she added.
Of the 21 highly migratory species reported caught in ICCAT waters in 2008, three quarters are classified as threatened with extinction in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These include Atlantic porbeagle, white-tip and scalloped hammerhead sharks. Furthermore, the 2010 report by the Standing Committee for Research and Statistics (SCRS) has indicted that the blue shark stock may be being overfished.
Oceana points out that, in 2009, ICCAT contracting parties put management measures in place for only one species of highly migratory shark, bigeye thresher. Catches of the rest of the threatened highly migratory sharks remain unregulated by ICCAT, the report states.
Of the 72 shark species listed in UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) as highly migratory species, 21 were reported caught in ICCAT waters in 2008, accounting for a total catch of 65,049 tonnes. Taking into account the average weight for each species recorded, “our estimates reveal that over 1.3 million of these highly migratory sharks were caught in ICCAT waters,” the report says. Oceana says that it is highly likely that this figure “is a gross underestimate”, given that 11 countries did not report any shark catches in 2008, and that misreporting of shark catch data in ICCAT in general is an acknowledged problem, according to the report. Scientific estimates based on Hong Kong shark fin trade data have shown that real shark catches in the Atlantic may be “from 200 to over 300% higher than reported catches to ICCAT”. This implies that the real number of highly migratory sharks killed in ICCAT waters can be over three times higher than the Oceana estimate.
Large numbers of sharks are caught for their fins, which are highly prized in Chinese cuisine, and, once the shark has been “finned”, the animal, whether dead or suffering agonies, is thrown back into the sea. Finning is prohibited, but weaknesses in the regulations mean that the ban is often ignored.
Oceana and other campaigning NGOs, supported by a few governments, have called on ICCAT to set quotas and to take other measures to protect these vulnerable species. Oceana is calling for a ban on catching endangered species of shark, including hammerhead, oceanic white-tip, common thresher and porbeagle sharks, and for catch limits to be set for other commonly caught species in ICCAT fisheries, especially for at-risk shortfin mako sharks.
The EU wants a ban on catching hammerhead, oceanic white-tip and porbeagle. The United States recently proposed that it should be made compulsory that all sharks caught at sea should be landed whole in order to make it easier to check that the ban on fishing shark solely for their fins is being respected and to help scientists better gauge the size of stocks.
Japan, which in March opposed protection of four species of endangered shark as part of the CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species), has just issued an urgent call to ICCAT calling for a ban on catches of white-tip sharks. (L.C./transl.rt)