Shark Fin Fishing proposed for Great Barrier Reef
Posted May 13th, 2008 by Ryan
The Australian Marine Conservation Society is astonished by this proposal, in which Queensland’s fisheries department (DPI&F) plans to legitimise one of the most unsustainable forms of fishing on the planet - shark fin fishing. With over 90% of the world’s sharks and other big fish gone from our oceans, this project is unsustainable, unethical and will be flatly rejected by the Australian public.
Not only is the Queensland Government proposing to hand out specific fishing licenses for shark fin fishing, which will entrench the practice for years, they are planning to legitimise shark finning in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and in the Marine Parks of Moreton Bay and the Great Sandy Straits with this new license proposal.
Where do we get global statistics and who collates them to tell us that 90% of sharks are gone from oceans? These statistics are almost impossible to collect in any scientific accuracy, as most countries do not have licencing and so don’t even keep track of the take.
We get it from the commerical markets that trade in sharks which are monitored independantly. This tells us 1,000,000 are traded for fins.
We know very little about the black market that doesn’t make it this far but I reckon its fair to assume that an animal that can take over 20 years to reach sexual maturity, give birth to only a few young can’t maintain that legal catch for long nevermind the illegal.
Just because the data is incomplete doesn’t mean the overall message isn’t right. As a diver I’ve had conversations with people who’ve been diving for years and spots they know well are in some cases shark free. Its qualitative, not quantitative, evidence but its still compelling.
Correction. I’m horribly out in my estimates. The below is from Oceana
http://oceana.org/north-america/media-center/press-releases/press_release/0/834
Each year, humans kill more than 100 million sharks worldwide. Shark finning alone kills 26 to 73 million sharks annually. Because shark carcasses are bulky, take up a lot of space and are less valuable, they are often thrown overboard. In fact, the practice of shark finning is extremely wasteful and only uses between one and five percent of the shark.
Sharks also are incidentally captured as “bycatch,” a term used for unintended catch, in commercial fisheries. It is estimated that tens of millions of sharks are caught as bycatch each year, which is nearly half of the total shark catch worldwide. When sharks are caught as bycatch they are often thrown overboard, many of them dead or seriously injured.