Annual reports of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council indicate a steep rise in the shark bycatch over the last four years. (Bycatch is a term referring to fish that the fisherman does not intend to catch, but which are hooked anyway.) Unlike many other species in the bycatch, sharks are usually not thrown back into the water or hauled into port (as, say, mahimahi might be). Instead, increasingly, the dorsal fins of the sharks are cut off and the animals, still alive, are returned to the water. There, unable to maneuver, they slowly “return to the food chain,” as one researcher put it, dismissing the issue.
But according to Jeffrey Polovina, a scientist at the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Honolulu laboratory, “ecologically, the shark bycatch is probably more important than the turtle bycatch.” Despite this, he goes on to say, its impact is not known nor has anyone undertaken the research needed to assess it.
A Bonus
For the fishermen, the shark fins are a bonus. They do not require space in the ship’s refrigerated hold, since the fins are dried. Vessel owners, say those close to the fishing industry, tend to regard shark-finning as a way to increase their crew’s pay without seeing the owners’ own share of the profits diminish.
The council’s statisticians estimate the total pounds of sharks caught in the longline fishery on the basis of the longline vessels’ logbook data, which, Polovina said, probably means the catch has been under-reported. These days, “an enormous volume of shark fins are coming through at Kewalo Basin,” Polovina said in a recent interview with Environment Hawai`i. The fins are taken by foreign vessels fishing in international waters as well as by the domestic fleet. On reaching Honolulu, the fins are unloaded and transshipped to Asia, where they are regarded as a delicacy.
Premium Prices
While shark fins were once a rarity in the market, they have become increasingly abundant with the onset modern fishing techniques. In recent years, imports of shark fins to Hong Kong and other Asian capitals have topped several billion pounds. Nor has increasing abundance meant falling prices. Shark fins continue to fetch premium prices. In Hong Kong, for example, a bowl of shark fin soup can cost more than $80. Retail prices for the fins can run as high as $300 a pound.
According to the fishery management council, in 1991, 222,000 pounds of shark were caught in Hawaiian waters. The following year, the catch was more than twice that (574,000 pounds). The shark catch peaked in 1993 at 2.6 million pounds, and by the end of 1994, it had declined to 1.8 million. The council’s 1994 draft report on the pelagic (open water) fishery discusses this only briefly: “Estimated shark catches were much higher in 1993 and 1994 due to substantial landings of shark fins by longline vessels.”
Cheap Thrills
In 1993, the decimation of sharks in the Atlantic Ocean by fishermen in the southeastern United States led the National Marine Fisheries Service to impose quotas on the taking of 39 overfished shark species. That may help account for the increasing numbers of shark fins showing up in Honolulu. Polovina also notes that the growth of the Hawai`i-based longline fleet since the late 1980s has doubtless contributed to the shark catch.
In addition to the numbers of finned sharks, unknown numbers of sharks are being cruelly slaughtered for no purpose at all. Some crews on fishing vessels have been known to put caught sharks on lines that trail from the back of the vessel, allowing the animal to “water-ski.” This, apparently, is a source of great amusement to the crews. On other vessels, lines are cut to free hooked sharks before the sharks are landed. While the fate of such sharks is not known, the likelihood injury from entanglement in the monofilament line is probably high.
So far, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council has done nothing to ensure that shark populations are not jeopardized in waters under its jurisdiction. The 1994 draft report recommends only that fishermen separate blue shark landings from total shark landings in their logbook summaries, since blue sharks tend to be most frequently caught.
A Horrible Thing
Sharks are slow to mature and produce only a few young over their lifetime. For this reason, they can take decades to recover from the effects of overfishing. If data on the health of shark populations are not received and plugged into a management regime at a relatively early stage in their exploitation, lasting damage to the stocks may result. Or, as Charles Manire, a shark researcher at the University of Miami put it, “By the time we can put a number on the problem, it’s normally too late.”1
At the University of Hawai`i’s Joint Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Research, one scientist, Xi He, has just now begun a study to estimate the bycatch of sharks and other species in the longline fleet. Investigations into the ecological effects of the slaughter of sharks in the Pacific awaits another day.
Polovina lamented the lack of research on shark populations here, as well as the apparent indifference of the council and the public to the cruel and increasingly common practice of finning.
“It’s a horrible thing,” he said.
1. Quoted in “Save the Sharks,” New Scientist, June 15, 1991. In Florida, the population of lemon sharks declined a hundredfold in 15 years, largely a result of fishing.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 6, Number 4 October 1995
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