Teeth bared in battle over world shark stocks

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Teeth bared in battle over world shark stocks

By Ben Blanchard

Reuters

9 Nov 2006

 

BEIJING, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A group of wildlife experts and industry officials

weighed into the increasingly acrimonious battle over shark fishing on Thursday,

saying very few species were threatened with extinction as some activists

charge.

 

Hitting back at what they said were misleading claims, they told Reuters that

there was no targeted killing of sharks just for their fins -- a Chinese

delicacy -- as most sharks are caught mainly for their meat.

 

" We want to tell the real picture to the world, " said Charlie Lim, secretary of

the Hong Kong-based Shark Fin and Marine Products Association.

 

" We believe what is true, is true. "

 

Some wildlife groups say that many sharks are specifically targeted for their

fins, which are hacked off and the sharks then thrown back into the sea to die a

painful death.

 

Lim disputed this as making no economic sense.

 

" Only taking the fin and leaving the meat -- this is impossible, " he said. " You

are not going to throw 98 percent of the shark back to the sea just for the 2

percent that is the fin. It's not worth it. "

 

The global campaign to protect sharks has included the use of celebrities to try

to persuade people in Asia not to eat shark fin to help save an animal which in

some cases they say faces extinction.

 

Over-fishing threatens 20 percent of the world's 547 shark and ray species with

extinction, the World Conservation Union -- also known as IUCN -- said earlier

this year.

 

Another distorted fact, say those on the other side of the argument.

 

" Sharks are not as endangered as made out by some extreme NGOs, " said Choo-hoo

Giam, an animals committee member of the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, better known as CITES.

 

He said only three shark species were on the CITES list of animals whose trade

and consumption was in need of monitoring -- the Basking Shark, the Whale Shark

and the Great White.

 

And none was on the most threatened list, he said.

 

" It's mischievous for advocates for shark protection to talk about endangered

species of sharks due to over-fishing, " added Hank Jenkins, president of

Australia's Species Management Specialists.

 

" Large environmental change is likely to be global warming or habitat

destruction. They're the factors that are going to produce biological

extinction, not fishing. "

 

The three -- Lim, Giam and Jenkins -- were in Beijing to attend a shark

conservation meeting, also attended by groups that dispute their claims about

finning and the extinction threat.

 

" For many of these species the data is quite conclusive. The number of sharks

ending up in international trade in fins is far higher than the number that are

going into trade as meat, " said Sarah Fowler, co-chair of the World Conservation

Union's shark specialist group.

 

" We're seeing serial depletion. In due course we will run out of productive

shark stocks, " she told Reuters on Wednesday.

 

" What we need is to get the management in before that happens. It's in

everyone's interests to introduce good, sound, collaborative fisheries

management. There's no argument about that. "

 

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