Shark Conservation – Analysis and Synthesis

Abstract

A detailed analysis of fishing records has shown that the shark species accessible to global fisheries have been systematically depleted for decades. They were already fished to about 10 percent of their former levels by 2003. Now one species after another is being listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as their numbers drop towards extinction. Shark depletion has not been well documented and a large proportion of shark mortality has been bycatch, the target species being teleost fish. But with the rise in value of shark fins due to the shark fin trade, at the same time as teleost fish stocks have become severely overfished, sharks, along with tuna, have become the most valuable catches. Fishing on the high seas is scarcely profitable, and so is heavily supported by subsidies. But the shark fin trade, in which organized crime is heavily involved, is driven by enormous profits and provides a powerful demand for the fins of all sharks. Thus it is now being supplied by fisheries around the world. There is no interest in sustainability in consumer countries, and neither the will nor the resources to manage the trade exist. Although some shark fisheries might have been managed sustainably in some regions for certain species for meat, such fisheries are increasingly dependent on the shark fin trade.. The rising global demand for shark fins, coupled with the increasing depletion of the animals supplying that demand, makes commercial fishing for sharks unsustainable. Given their high ecological value across the aquatic ecosystems they inhabit, it is important that they receive more effective measures of protection going far beyond the currently existing ones. In particular, protection of all sharks, manta rays, devil rays and rhino rays through an Appendix I CITES listing should be effected immediately due to the scale of the global take of the shark fin trade and the state of shark depletion amply documented in the literature.

Global-Scale Environmental Niche and Habitat of Blue Shark (Prionace glauca) by Size and Sex: A Pivotal Step to Improving Stock Management

“…Blue shark is amongst the most abundant shark species in international trade (Okes and Sant, 2019) for the meat and/or fins (e.g., dominant shark species for meat in Japan, Spain, Taiwan, and Uruguay: Okes and Sant, 2019;Brazil: Cruz et al, 2021;Italy: Serena and Silvestri, 2018;Mancusi et al, 2020). Overall, the importance of blue shark in the fin trade highlights its economic importance and the driver of the demand (Porcher et al, 2021). Although some fleets release blue shark bycatch (Campana, 2016), this species is a major component of retained incidental catch of longline and driftnet fisheries, particularly from nations with high-seas fleets (Okes and Sant, 2019), often seasonally complementing the catches of other pelagic species.…”

Shark Fishing vs. Conservation: Analysis and Synthesis

“…Some elasmobranchs, including reef and tiger sharks, leave their ranges for a period of weeks when fishing begins [62,63] putting their communities [64,65] into disarray. The tendency to flee when some of their number are killed has been observed for both reef sharks in French Polynesia and tiger sharks in the Bahamas, including by local inhabitants [63,66], suggesting that it is a general reaction to fishing pressure.…”