The Saltwater Magazine for Gulf Coast Fishing!
Market Demand Threatens Sharks
by Chester Moore, Jr.
- Commercial fisherman Mick Riley was fishing off the coast of Alabama
three years ago when he came upon a sight that shocked and disgusted him.
There on his line was a completely finless, but still alive 300 pound hammerhead
shark. Someone had cut the fins from the shark and dumped it back into
the sea.
- "It was one of those sights I will never forget. There was this shark, robbed of its fins and left to die. I've fished commercially all my life, but I believed in treating the ocean's creature's with respect. How could someone do something so wasteful?", Riley asked.
- The answer is simple: Money.
- In recent years, shark fins have commanded up to $25 a pound for use in gourmet dishes like "shark fin soup." And this practice of "finning" or removing only the sharks fins is one reason that many marine scientists believe sharks are declining in parts of the Atlantic and other oceans.
- "There is no question that there are fewer sharks than there were
15 or 20 years ago," said Gary Matlock, biologist with the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NFMS) Office of Sustainable Fisheries.
- "The real problem is how far they have declined and what is the danger of overfishing. That is a very hot issue right now," Matlock said. One reason it's hot is that NMFS has greatly curtailed both commercial and sports catches of 39 kinds of sharks in the past few years. These regulation changes have hurt commercial shark anglers in the Atlantic and Gulf, most of whom started pursuing sharks in the 1980s
- when NMFS declared sharks to be an "underutilized species".
- "At first they were telling us that sharks were so abundant that we should pursue them. Then they find out that shark numbers can't take the pressure," said Dan Olfatz, an east coast fish buyer.
- "I'll be the first one to tell you that some shark species are in trouble. But I wish NMFS would have used better science in setting quotas back when they promoted shark fishing. That would have solved a lot of problems," he added.
- When NMFS sold commercial fisherman on pursuing sharks, they were trying to divert pressure from already over-fished species like blackfin tuna and broadbill swordfish. They didn't expect so many commercial boats to switch over to shark
- fishing nor they did they expect a market for products like shark meat, leather and shark cartilage to develop in America.
- In the 1980s, commercial landings of shark increased from less than 550 tons to 8,250 tons nationwide in response to the new demand for shark products. That's an increase of nearly 2,000 percent. An even greater problem is the influx of foreign fishing vessels in the international waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
- "Finning" is now an illegal practice in some areas, but foreign vessels still "fin" sharks by the hundreds of thousands with virtually no recourse for their action. Mick Riley's encounter in Alabama three years ago was most likely the work of a foreign long-lining vessel or it could have been the dirty work of an unethical American vessel. Some still practice "finning", despite the potential for stiff fines.
- Getting a little closer to home, researchers at Louisiana State University (LSU) have found that pogy boats operating off the coast of Louisiana and Texas are contributing to shark mortality through a high level of by-catch. Many juvenile sharks spend the summer months in the same stretch of water these boats operate in and they feed heavily on pogys, so it's easy to see how this practice might contribute to the death of many sharks.
- Some marine biologists fear that all of these factors combined may have already put certain shark species at such a high level of danger that their numbers may never be sustained.
- Although some fish populations can rebound from such problems, the sharks slow reproductive cycles inhibit rapid population rebounds. Most shark species have to be at lease eight years old before they can reproduce and after that ,most species only produce a few pups a year. Since sharks are the ocean's top predator, scientists fear their demise could unravel the entire undersea food chain.
- In the words of the late world-famous ocean explorer Jacque Cousteau, "The shark is a hard species to stand behind because of the occasional human attack. But they fulfill a very important role by keeping the oceans clean. That's something humans themselves have had a hard time doing."