Brussels, 19/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - Up to 24 countries could be catching sharks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean without declaring some or all of their catch to ICCAT (International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas). This is what the organisation Oceana has stated in a report published on Tuesday 19 November, which included an analysis of Hong Kong's data on the trade in shark fins.
This report, published as ICCAT is meeting in South Africa, identifies two categories of countries which are not observing ICCAT rules on declaring captures: - countries which have not declared shark catches even though they exported shark fins to Hong Kong in 2012 (Republic of Guinea, Mauritania, the Philippines, Panama, Croatia and others, but no other EU countries); - countries which have not declared shark catches, but which have longliners authorised by ICCAT to carry out fishing activities (Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Cyprus and France, and third countries including Panama, the Philippines, Turkey, Algeria and Libya). These vessels are highly likely to catch sharks.
Oceana states that, of the 350 species of sharks caught in the ICCAT zone, just eight of the rarest species are covered by ICCAT management measures, and four of the five species most vulnerable to overfishing are subject to no measures at all. Extremely threatened species, such as the porbeagle, continue to be landed and sold, whilst commercially fished species, such as the shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) and the blue shark (Prionace glauca), are being fished with no limits on catches, even though there is considerable uncertainty over the state of stocks.
Oceana calls upon ICCAT to adopt the following measures at its meeting: - assess and penalise countries' failure to observe the rules on declaring data on sharks; - require sharks to be landed with their fins attached (ban on finning, a measure already taken by the EU, the United States, Brazil and Japan, plus Morocco and Turkey, but only in the waters of the Mediterranean); - establish catch limits (quotas) based on the precautionary principle for those shark species most affected by commercial fishing, such as the shortfin mako and the blue shark; - prohibit the retention, landing and trade of highly threatened species, such as porbeagles. (LC/transl.fl)