Maldives Ban Fishing of Sharks
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/asia/10iht-shark.html
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The Maldives will make its territorial waters into a shark sanctuary, a government official said Tuesday, lending momentum to efforts to protect the fish at a United Nations endangered species conference that begins this week.
Maldives becomes the second nation to announce blanket protection for its sharks. Palau, a tiny Micronesian state, in September announced a ban on shark fishing. Like the Maldives, Palau is regarded as one of the world’s top scuba-diving destinations.
The Maldives exclusive economic zone covers about 90,000 square kilometers, or 35,000 square miles, roughly equivalent to the land area of Portugal.
In one sense, the bans represent pure economic logic. Researchers from James Cook University in Australia last year estimated that a single gray reef shark was worth $3,300 a year to the Maldivian tourism industry, compared with the one-time value of $32 that a fisherman would get from the same shark. They found a similar dynamic with regard to sharks on the Great Barrier Reef.
But the bigger issue is a rapid decline in global shark stocks that has alarmed scientists. Up to 30 percent of shark species is threatened with extinction, said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group. “If we don’t leave enough in the water, they won’t recover.”
In the United States, the Shark Conservation Act, which would sharply curtail the practice of “finning” — cutting off sharks’ fins and throwing the rest of the animal back into the sea — has passed the House of Representatives and is awaiting approval in the Senate.
Mr. Rand said more than 70 million of the fish were killed each year just to support the sharkfin trade. The vast majority of those are sold in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where they are used in sharkfin soup. Fins can fetch as much as $120 per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, in Hong Kong.
“Sharks don’t have the ability to rebound,” he said. “They grow slowly and they’re late to mature.”
Some sharks do not reach maturity until they are more than 10 years old and even then have only a few pups, so the stock cannot reproduce rapidly enough to make up for overfishing.
Maldives becomes the second nation to announce blanket protection for its sharks. Palau, a tiny Micronesian state, in September announced a ban on shark fishing. Like the Maldives, Palau is regarded as one of the world’s top scuba-diving destinations.
The Maldives exclusive economic zone covers about 90,000 square kilometers, or 35,000 square miles, roughly equivalent to the land area of Portugal.
In one sense, the bans represent pure economic logic. Researchers from James Cook University in Australia last year estimated that a single gray reef shark was worth $3,300 a year to the Maldivian tourism industry, compared with the one-time value of $32 that a fisherman would get from the same shark. They found a similar dynamic with regard to sharks on the Great Barrier Reef.
But the bigger issue is a rapid decline in global shark stocks that has alarmed scientists. Up to 30 percent of shark species is threatened with extinction, said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group. “If we don’t leave enough in the water, they won’t recover.”
In the United States, the Shark Conservation Act, which would sharply curtail the practice of “finning” — cutting off sharks’ fins and throwing the rest of the animal back into the sea — has passed the House of Representatives and is awaiting approval in the Senate.
Mr. Rand said more than 70 million of the fish were killed each year just to support the sharkfin trade. The vast majority of those are sold in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where they are used in sharkfin soup. Fins can fetch as much as $120 per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, in Hong Kong.
“Sharks don’t have the ability to rebound,” he said. “They grow slowly and they’re late to mature.”
Some sharks do not reach maturity until they are more than 10 years old and even then have only a few pups, so the stock cannot reproduce rapidly enough to make up for overfishing.
