Poor old sharks. Vilified as ruthless killers long before Jaws, their plight continually fails to excite the public in the way that threats to the polar bears or the whales do. Make no mistake though, sharks are in serious trouble.
“As a result of high and mostly unrestricted fishing pressure, many sharks are now considered to be at risk of extinction,” Julia Baum, part of conservation group the IUCN’s shark unit told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (press release).
In total 9 species of shark are to be added to the endangered list later this year, on top of the 126 already on the IUCN’s famous ‘red list’. According to wikipedia, that’s out of a grand total of 360 species of shark on the planet.
Of particular concern to experts is the practice of ‘finning’, where just the fins are cut off sharks and the rest of the animal is dumped overboard. A number of news sources point out that fins can go for nearly $300 a kilogram in China, where they are eaten as a delicacy.
“The market is mainly in China but most of the information comes from Hong Kong because most shark fins go through there,” says Baum (Independent). “It is estimated that between 26 and 73 million sharks are going through the Hong Kong fin market each year. That’s three to four times the total shark catches being reported to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.”
Research conducted by Baum and others has shown that all speiceis of shark have declined by 50% since the 70s, with scalloped hammerhead, bull and dusky shark populations dropping more than 95%.
At least they’ll all be able to move to Antarctica. Another piece of news coming out of the AAAS is that if the Antarctic gets any warmer it will start to become hospitable for sharks (press release).
“The water only needs to remain above freezing year round for it to become habitable to some sharks, and at the rate we’re going, that could happen this century,” says Cheryl Wilga, of the University of Rhode Island. “Once they get there, it will completely change the ecology of the Antarctic benthic community.
“There are few prey-crushing predators in Antarctic waters. As a result, the Antarctic seafloor has been dominated by relatively soft-bodied, slow-moving invertebrates, just as in ancient oceans prior to the evolution of shell-crushing predators.”
Some media reports of Wilga’s presentation are more excited by the army of killer crabs that will also invade when waters warm (Times, Scotsman). See Nature’s coverage for more details.
From the archive: Sharks in hot water, September 2006
Image: white-tip shark / NOAA