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Shark Species Face Extinction, Says Research
Nine new species of sharks, including the scalloped hammerhead, are to be added to the official list of animals at global risk of extinction, scientists have revealed.The World Conservation Union (IUCN) will add them to its "red list" of vulnerable species later this year after recent analyses showed over- fishing has reduced some populations by as much as 99 per cent.
Scalloped hammerhead sharks facing extinction The scalloped hammerhead is one of 126 sharks species listed as at risk of extinction
Experts are particularly concerned at the rapid decline of the scalloped hammerhead, which the IUCN will list as "endangered" - its second highest of five levels of concern.
Sharks' fins are highly prized as a delicacy in Chinese cooking, and prices can reach as much as £150 per kg.
An estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year, with many fishermen simply slicing off their fins before throwing them back into the water where they usually drown or bleed to death.
Dr Julia Baum, a member of the IUCN's Shark Specialist Group, revealed the plans to add the species to the endangered list at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Boston. advertisement
Dr Baum, a marine ecologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said: "Our oceans are being emptied of sharks and the scale of the problem is global.
"If we carry on without doing anything about it we are looking at a high risk that some of these could be extinct within our lifetime.
"On the high seas and in international waters there are no regulations or catch limits. It's a free for all.
"Over the last decade conservation concerns have been mounting. Now we need to convert that into action to introduce effective measures that are strictly enforced."
There are 126 sharks listed as at risk of extinction - defined by the IUCN as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable.
Research by Dr Baum and colleagues found numbers of tiger, bull, dusky, smooth and scalloped hammerhead shark have collapsed by between 95 and 99 per cent off the US east coast since 1970.
Last year the Shark Specialist Group of the IUCN met to assess the risks to oceanic shark species - those that are highly mobile and live primarily in the open ocean, away from coastal areas.
Apart from classifying the scalloped hammerhead as endangered, the smooth hammerhead, the shortfin mako, the bigeye thresher and the common thresher will be listed as vulnerable.
Tiger, dusky and bull sharks will either be classed as vulnerable or "near threatened" - a category defined as close to the threshold for risk of extinction. The silky shark will also be classed as near threatened.
Scalloped hammerheads congregate in large numbers around seamounts and islands, making them easy targets for fishermen. It takes 16 years for them to reach maturity, meaning that populations take a long time to recover.
There are no catch limits in international waters and existing bans on "finning" are ineffective. Spanish fishing fleets in particular have been targeting sharks.
Millions of sharks are also taken by recreational fishermen and as bycatch by fleets fishing for tuna and swordfish.
In December the United Nations passed a resolution calling for catch limits and true shark-finning bans, and the European Union is currently drawing up a plan of action.
Sonja Fordham, of the Shark Alliance conservation alliance, said: "People think these wide-ranging, fast sharks are resilient to fishing; however, this is not the case.
"Concerned citizens can really help by making their fisheries ministers aware that they support conservation measures such as catch limits."
© 2008 The Telegraph
12 Comments so far
Show AllYes, sharks face extinction along with Polar Bears, Bees, Bats, Frogs, plankon and, well, just about everything except roaches. Let's face it, we are not that far behind on the endangered species list as our very existence is tenuously dependent on the species that are disappearing. The only difference is that we have a choice.
Another appalling example of failed dysfunctional UNenvironmental policies of successive administrations dating back to the 2nd world war... When sea levels rise 5 meters sooner than we think; the Homo Sapiens will be toast...
"Polar Bears, Bees, Bats, Frogs, plankon..." are the canaries in the coal mine...
Grrrr looks like I better double the medication again...
Just so asians can have a decoration in their soup.
People there have shark fin soup as a status symbol.
So the people at the next table know they have money.
Humans suck but man, asia is messed up.
Many years ago I watched an old Mexican catching hammerhead sharks. He lived in a small cave on the Baja and fished the gulf of California. He would row out every morning to retrieve the shark he had hooked in the night. Nothing was wasted. The teeth and jaws were cleaned for the tourists. The skin was cut into squares for sandpaper. The meat was dried in the sun and sold into the interior. And, yes, the fins were dried and packaged for sale to Japan. It was just one old fisherman, wasting nothing, and the sharks swam in a great school that stretched all the way across the gulf from Baja to the mainland. That was a long sustainable time ago when nothing was wasted or thrown back. It was a time before greed. It was a time before this one.
"Humans suck but man, asia is messed up."
I can't believe I am reading that on a progressive site.
Did you ever stop to wonder how many things we do in North America that in other parts of the world they might think are just as "messed up"? The list is almost endless.
How is the environmental destruction as a result of our custural and societal practices any less than the environmental destruction that is a result of theirs?
This comment from a Nation that still officially denies global warming and is single-handedly leading the charge to the destruction of the human race...in more ways than one.
Jaguara
If we could get the Humans off this rock maybe, just maybe the rest of the inhabitants might make it. I think that is W's plan!
Well, since I've read that tuna are becoming rare, and now sharks, and have given up eating beef, pork, turkey, chicken and most dairy, now I guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and give up eating fish, at least the oceanic ones.
Could, I suppose, eat freshwater fish that I catch myself, as long as I can find a local body of water that's clean enough to support any.
If humanity has a blind spot, it's in its inability to notice that there are TOO MANY PEOPLE.
Why is it so hard to get people to see human overpopulation as the underlying source?
When I lived in Panama, the native people use to swim with sharks. I guess there is a trick to doing it as they advised others not to do it.
i think at this point little will change... not until we face the truth and that's not likely to happen until we witness or become part of a massive loss of life - people are waiting for the shit to hit the fan. we're all wasting energy, water, creating pollution... we're just waiting for that point of HOLY FUCK WE'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING AHHH AHHH!!!!! panic to set in. We're waiting for that fucked up moment and here on planet Earth we humans are dumb enough to believe either a) in this moment of insanity and chaos our leaders will actually be able to pull us together and save the day or b) god will save us - god won't save a thing and our leaders will be wetting themselves in fear. wake up.
as for scenario a? do you really imagine you'd be able to pull your own shit together and help people? no you'll be losing your fucking mind just like the rest. we're going to be weeping because too many of us aren't willing to stare down deep into our own lives and get a good solid look at the materialism and emptiness that resides in there. greed is keeping us sitting around talking about the problem and pointing fingers and screaming at one another.
the other problem I'm seeing is this: we're all part of the lets do something!!!! choir. we need to be engaging more than the progressive community - i imagine you're all working very hard and trying to do the right things, but that's you not the majority - the masses are leaving the lights on afraid of the dark, eating up a storm of processed foods, meats, beer - (beer is great but such a waste of water!)...
find something unsustainable in your life and remove it from your daily patterns. every step helps. just gotta get others to listen in and understand.
I agree with Gene Therapy. 90% of our problems, ecological, social and otherwise have to do with the fact that planet Earth is grossly overpopulated. An ironic tragedy that it's highest form—the most intelligent species?—should be the cause of its undoing. Even the greed wouldn't matter so much if there were about 5.5 billion less of us. We have gone from being the jewel in the crown of the Earth to a cancer on its face. And with every million added the value of a life becomes cheaper.
Alas
egon
To: Gene Therapy
That's because overpopulation is NOT a source of ANY problems. The problem is MISMANAGEMENT.
There are 8 billion acres of arable soil worldwide. Vegan agriculture requires .3 acres per person to produce thriving sustenance. That works out to 24 billion people's worth of land growing facility which doesn't even account for 75% of the Earths surface which is capable of growing seaweed at a rate of 2 feet per day! Sea weed is 60X more mineral dense than any land grown plant.
What do we need apart from food air and water? Iodine, and there's plenty of that too. The oxygen being so deplete in urban areas is a direct result of the industry bonding it to carbon, which is wholly unnecessary.
The problem is mismanagement, by murderous ever life attempters.
Google this for understanding of what I mean there /\:
regenerative medicine "fountain of youth"
Then think of why the media and Bush are still harrying stem cell research when it's been known since 2002 that ADULT stem cells are viable as therapeutic stem cells.
Where are you seeing the push to veganism in major media? No where, instead you see the dominants philosophy, guns and explosions and a high dose of idiocy for everyone that'll go to work the day after they watch this crap and toil to pay so the government can build guns and bombs and bullets to subdue the eventual recognition of their having been so duped by still treacherously active men and women, can't forget Hilary and who's that head of the Senate...Pelosi.