Shark Newz

GANSBAAI (SOUTH AFRICA)- Research Conducted by Marine Dynamics a Shark Cage Diving Operator in Gansbaai South Africa.

Research Conducted by Marine Dynamics a Shark Cage Diving Operator in Gansbaai South Africa

Shark massacre in Ecuador

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (BRUNEI)- The sultanate of Brunei has announced it will enforce the ban on the catch and landings of all shark species from Brunei’s waters. And thus cease the sale of any related products in the domestic market. Furthermore, Brunei will also now officially enforce the ban on the importation and trade of shark products which has been in place since August 2012.

This announcement was declared by the Minister of Industry and Primary Resources, with the remarkable name of Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Utama Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Yahya bin Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Haji Bakar,  during the ‘Celebrate the Sea Festival’ in-conjunction with the Worlds Oceans Day 2013 yesterday.

Fins
The minister said sharks are targeted for their fins only, whereas the rest of the body are discarded back to the sea – most of the time barely breathing – to die.

He reminded the audience at the festival that sharks occupy an important hierarchy in the marine food web as “higher predators” in the marine environment.

CITES
The ban supports the international bodies such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at the recently concluded 16th Conference of Parties (16th COP) on CITES in Bangkok, Thailand. More shark species were listed under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as vulnerable, endangered and threatened.

Shark resources
The minister believes that the impact from the ban would decrease the fishing pressure towards the shark resources, especially in Brunei and in international waters while more importantly safeguard the nation’s overall fishers’ resources to be in a preserved state in the future.

Fish resources around the waters of Brunei are declining significantly, similar to other countries in the world, with about 21 per cent of what it was in 1999 mainly due to overfishing.

Fishing targets
The minister narrowed down his point on shark catches, which are declining significantly over the years. The catches were around 40 metric tonnes in 1994 and they fell to 16 metric tonnes in 2011, even though shark is not a targeted fish in Brunei.

The event marks the 12th Celebrate the Sea Festival, which Brunei, with more than 41,000 square kilometres of majestic ocean and marine biodiversity, is a home for more than 400 coral species and a diversity of 670 species of fish, hosts.

Read more at the Borneo Post

The European Union (EU) agreed this week to tighten up an existing ban on shark finning by eliminating a loophole that allowed fisherman to still remove fins from caught shark.

The ban for EU fishing crews has existed since 2003, but with special permits they were still allowed to remove the fins from shark carcasses. Ministers have now agreed with MEPs to eliminate that legal loophole.

The Shark Trust campaign group says the EU exports 27 percent of the fins traded in Hong Kong – a major fin-trading centre.

Hong Kong accounts for more than half of all the fins traded worldwide, the group says. They are used in soups and traditional cures in Asia, where they are valued much more highly than the rest of the shark.

Finning is deemed cruel because the fins are often removed while the shark is still alive – it then drowns when it is thrown back into the sea.

A statement from the EU Council, which groups ministers from the 27 member states, said finning had contributed to a serious decline in shark populations.

It said that “with its policy of fins remaining attached, the EU will also be in a better position to push for shark protection at international level”.

On a global level Indonesia lands the highest tonnage of sharks.

Conservationists argued that the issuing of Special Fishing Permits (SFPs) that allowed fins to be removed at sea prevented the EU ban from becoming fully effective.

According to European Parliament data, the largest number of SFPs issued were to Spanish and Portuguese vessels (1,266 and 145 respectively, in 2004-2010).

Portugal voted against the new controls, the Council said.

Source: BBC

smooth-hound shark. Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons/Mark J. Fox

BALTIMORE (USA)- Fishermen on the eastern US coasts catching smooth dogfish are allowed to bring back to port more than twice the ratio of fins to bodies.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided to ease on the restrictions of shark finning. Conservation groups are furious and concerned that the change makes it easier for illegal finning of dogfish and similar sharks to go undetected.

Atlantic states ease restriction on shark finning for the small shark, known as dogfish. Finning refers to slicing off their fins and tossing the still alive shark to the ocean to die. Allowing fishermen to land more fins than carcasses makes it difficult to enforce restrictions on finning

Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International, said to the Examiner that the commission’s move is “a giant step backwards” at a time when many other nations are imposing more stringent rules to prevent finning.

US Atlantic fishermen land more smooth dogfish than any other shark species except for spiny dogfish. The catch is mostly exported, with the meat used in fish and chips and the fins in shark fin soup.

Earlier this year, lawmakers in the state of Maryland voted to ban the shark fin trade, but exempted the smooth as well as spiny dogfish. In Texas a ban on shark finning didn’t make it.

It is estimated that the global value of the shark fin trade ranges from U.S. $540 million to U.S. $1.2 billion. More than 70 million sharks die each year as a result of “shark finning”.

Read more at the Examiner

Shark fins left to dry. Photo: Jemapelle/Flickr.

AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)- Air New Zealand is the the latest airline to stop flying shipments of shark’s fin to Hong Kong, the shark’s fin capital of the world.

The decision came about after the New Zealand Shark Alliance revealed the airline’s shipments in local media.

Earlier, other airlines did the same, such as Cathay Pacific. Air Pacific, soon to be Fiji Airlines, was accused last week by conservation groups of being one of the world’s major carriers of shark fins into Hong Kong..

Prominent hotels and restaurants in the city –like the Peninsula Hotels Group-, have been publicly striking shark’s fin from their menus, while Hong Kong’s main carrier Cathay Pacific also announced a ban on shark’s fin cargo last September.

Approximately 72 million sharks are killed each year and 10,000 tons of fins are traded through Hong.

Read more at CNN.

HONG KONG (CHINA)- Air Pacific, soon to be Fiji Air, has been accused by environmentalist groups of of being one of the world’s major carriers of shark fins into Hong Kong. The airline profiles itself as ‘shark friendly’.

Campaigners claim that the airline carries shark fins as cargo on its passenger flights. 

A letter signed by a coalition of environmental groups — amongst others Ric O’Barry, star of The Cove — claims that a ‘substantial amount’ of the fins imported into Hong Kong last year arrived on Air Pacific planes.

A report by the South China Morning Post says that according to a group of pilots familiar with Air Pacific’s operations, the airline’s new Airbus A330 was “basically a thinly-disguised freighter” carrying shark fins to the territory from Pacific islands, which use Fiji as a trade hub.

Air Pacific claims to be ‘shark-friendly’, and recently sponsored a competition called Happy Hearts Love Sharks, run by the Hong Kong Shark Foundation. This campaign encourages newlyweds to abandon the traditional shark fin soup at their weddings.

On its website the company proclaimed how proud it was to support the competition, saying “shark tourism is an important source of revenue for the local economy.”

 The competition winners were given a honeymoon in Fiji, courtesy of the sponsors.

The Hong Kong Shark Foundation believes that shark fins from the Cook Islands and Vanuatu were shipped to Fiji and appeared to be making their way to Hong Kong on Air Pacific flights, many of them to be sold on to the mainland China market.

Read more at South China Morning Post.

GUJARAT (INDIA)- Through the SharkNewz Daily I stumbled upon this shocking video on the slaughter of whale sharks off the Indian coast. It is a shortened version of the award-winning film ‘Shores of Silence’.

This film moved the government of India into bringing in legislation and banning the killing of the Whale Sharks on Indian shores. The Whale Shark was declared protected under the Indian Wildlife Act- 1972, bringing it at par with the tigers and the Rhino.

This was a landmark move. It was the first marine species to be protected under the Indian law.

In November 2002, at the international CITES meet in Chile, Santiago, a negative voting changed into an overwhelming positive after this film was shown to the delegates – bringing global protection of the Whale Shark and giving the largest fish in the world a new lease of life.

The Film has also been greatly successful in bringing about change in the attitude of fisher folk

Awards won:

1. THE GREEN OSCAR -Winner of the Worlds most Prestigious GREEN OSCAR / PANDA AWARD, Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, UK – 2000
2. The Citta Di Toronto at the Cinemambiente Awadrs – 2001
3. The 6th Sichuan TV Festival , China – 2001
4. The Honour of Knowledge Award at Baristlava, Slovakia – 2001
5. The Golden Jury Award, Worldfest, Houston- 2002
6. The Rolls Royce, Commonwealth Broadcasting Award, UK- 2002
7. Ecofilm, Award in the Category of Documentary, Oct 2002
8. Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic Award, Nov 2002
9. Wildlife trust of India, Endangered Species Award, 2002
10. Vatavaran 2003 Prithvi Ratan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Global Conservation, November 2003
11.National Award for Best Adventure & Exploration Film, 2005

BANGKOK (Thailand)- A group of 23 luxury hotels in the Thai capital of Bangkok have pledged to ban shark fin soup. As part of a campaign to halt the decline of shark populations they signed up to a so-called “blue list”, promoting Thai hotels that don’t serve shark fin soup.

Amongst the hotels are the Peninsula Bangkok, Banyan Tree and Shangri-La.

The Fin Free Thailand campaign is calling on other hotels to join the list and is offering free information on alternative sustainable options to those that need help phasing shark fin soup off their menus.

Fin Free Thailand discovered that not all hotels are doing what they say to the public. “We’ve found that some hotels not openly offering or promoting shark fin soup in the name of conservation, are still serving hundreds of bowls at request for business and wedding banquets”, says Jirayu Ekkul, Fin Free Thailand spokesperson and marine conservation campaign director for Love Wildlife Foundation to the Bangkok Post.

“We want them to be honest with the public and make a real commitment to marine conservation by completely banning shark fin. The Fin Free Blue List highlights hotels making a 100% commitment to protect sharks by not serving shark fin at all.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 90 percent of the world’s sharks have disappeared over the past hundred years due to overfishing, while humans kill about hundred million sharks each year, mostly for their fins.

read more at Bangkok Post.

Warning sign for sharks. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons.

CAPE TOWN (SOUTH AFRICA)- The council of the South-African town of Cape Town is working on implementing new shark nets in Fish Hoek. These ones are designed to keep sharks out, rather than the conventional nets that are designed to kill them.

What makes Fish Hoek’s “exclusion nets” a world first is that they are being designed to be deployed and raised on a daily basis.

Together with the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board the council is developing nets that go in and come out of the water everyday. Normally exclusion nets are  permanent fixed installation.  The aim of the Fish Hoek nets is to be able to deploy them in 40 minutes. If it takes two hours every day, it is a very costly exercise.

The main purpose of course of the nets at the southern end of Fish Hoek beach is to give the public a swimming area safe from sharks. They will be removed at sunset, so that marine life can have free movement at night. They will also be removed in rough seas, which could damage them, and during times when they could pose a risk of entanglement to marine life, such as during the whale season.

Read more at IOL.

BANGKOK (THAILAND)- After reporting yesterday here on Sharknewz.com that the Ocean Whitetip will  be more protected, two more speciess of critically endangered but commercially valuable shark have been given added protection at the Cites meeting in Bangkok. The Porbeagle and three varieties of Hammerhead sharks. Shark conservationists worldwide hailed the move as historic and said the vote represented a major breakthrough for marine conservation.

The Oceanic whitetip, three varieties of Hammerheads and the Porbeagle are all said to be seriously threatened by overfishing.Their numbers have declined dramatically in recent years, as the trade in shark fins for soup has grown.

Cites regulates trade in flora and fauna. Delegates at the Bangkok meeting voted by a two-thirds majority to upgrade the sharks’ status. The decisions can still be overturned by a vote on the final day of this meeting later this week. Shark supporters have been attempting to get Cites to protect these species since 1994. But there has long been strong opposition to the move from China and Japan.