Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your
contribution is not tax-deductible.)
PayPal Acct: 
Feedback: 
Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):
| [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ] |
| Subject: Article from "Saltwater Sportsman" Magazine | |
|
Author: Jim Morris |
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 937695313PDT Forwarded: Hello everyone the following is an article that was published in the august 1999 edition of the Saltwater Sportsman issue: Fisheries Front (name of the monthly column) Hawaii Longline Fishery Threatens Sharks By. Ken Hinman Any way you look at it, the practice of finning sharks is abhorrent. It happens like this: Commercial fishermen hook or net a shark while fishing for something else. One of the crew quickly subdues the creature (a sharp blow from a baseball bat usually does the trick), then carves off its dorsal and caudal fins. The still-living shark, whose mutilated body is considered "worthless" compared with the value of other species, is dumped back in the water. The cruelty of finning a living shark is unconscionable. Imagine yourself left alive and limbless in the wild, helplessly waiting to starve to death --- if scavengers don't pick you apart first. The waste is intolerable. Millions of sharks every year are killed just for their fins, most of which are sold to China to make high-priced soups (up to $100 a bowl). The treat posed to the populations of these extraordinary predators isvery real. The insatiable demand for fins is driving shark fishing to unsustainable levels worldwide. For all these reasons, finning on the U.S. Atlantic coast has been outlawed since the federal government enacted a shark management plan in 1993. Around that same time, however, the commercial shark catch in Hawaii was exploding. Between 1991 and 1997, landings in Honolulu increased by 30-fold. Virtually all the sharks in the Hawaiian fishery are taken for their fins, which means the vast majority aren't "landed" at all, but discarded at sea. This spring, island fishermen teamed with local and national conservationists to back a bill in the Hawaii State Legislature to prohibit finning. If passed the legislation would have required that all sharks be brought ashore whole, a strong incentive for fishermen targeting other species to release sharks alive and intact. As it is now, longline vessels discard the carcasses, hang the fins from the rigging to dry, and reserve precious cargo space for more valuable tuna and swordfish. The finning ban moved swiftlly through the House but was killed in the Senate, a victim of heavy lobbying by some powerful opponents. Although the failure to pass the bill was a setback for conservationists, efforts to protect sharks in the western Pacific did not die with it. Those efforts are now being focused on the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (WPFMC). COUNCIL DOWNPLAYS PROBLEM The biggest objections to the anti-finning bill, aside from the predictable resistance from sh ark finners, and exporters, came from the Western Pacific Council. The WPFMC is the feederal body responsible for managing sharks and other pelagic fish in the waters surrounding Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific Territories (Guam, Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands). Its opposition was only partly over turf, though. Finning, according to the council, is neither cruel, wasteful nor a threat to sh ark conservation. Reports from federal observers aboard Hawaiian longline vessels indicate as many as 86 percent of hooked sharks are alive when they reach the boat. The council rebuts charges that the practice of finning is inhumane by citing observer reports that 98 percent of those sharks are killed before their fins are removed. I don't dispute the accuracy of the observer reports on either statistic. But i do question whether the behavior of fishermen with federal agents looking over their shoulders (only about five percent of the fleet is monitored) should be considered the norm throughout the fishery. In every video I've seen of sharks being finned at sea, very few are killed first and many are clearly alive when wrestled back overboard. This is not because the fishermen are being intentionally cruel, but because making sure the sharks are dead simply takes too much time. (the same films show swordfish being "billed" alive for teh same reason.) Let's be clear: The cruelty that outrages the public is not sharks being killed for food, but being released alive and finless. Sharks are part of a brutal, bloodthirsty world and they survive because they're the baddest of the bad. When the hunter becomes toe h unted, it can't very well go whining to the Humane Society. But when sharks are made to su ffer needlessly, or the tables are turned so drastically and they are killed in such numbers that it threatens their survival as a species, we've got a serious problem. That's what's happening and finning is the reason why. It used to be that the only shark fishing in Hawaii was done to protect the public from shark attacks. Fishermen paid to go fishing for sharks were part of a state-sponsered shark control program. It was halted in the late 1970s because it proved ineffective to reducing the risk of attack. There also was growing concern among scientists and the public that eliminating sharks on a larger scale would have unknown ecological impacts. When longline fishing for tunas and swordfish increased dramatically in the late 1980s, fishermen began catching sharks in huge numbers, albeit unintentionally. Most of this "bycatch" consisted of blue sharks and at first most of them were released alive, since the meat is worth only pennies a pound to Hawaii's fish dealers. But then things changed. As the WPFMC points out, rising demand for shark fins in Asia and over fishing of the species preferred by the fin market suddenly made the fins of blue sharks very valuable. In 1991, the Hawaii-based longline fleet landed just 200,000 pounds of sharks. Within six years the catch had surpassed five million pounds. This 3000-percent increase means that an estimated 100,000 sharks - makos, threshers and whitetips, along with the predominant blues - formerly released alive as unwanted bycatch are now being killed each year just for their fins, which fetch up to $30 per pound at the dock. An editorial in the _Honolulu Advertiser_ likned shark finning to the killing of leopards and tigers for their skins and elephants for their Ivory. But the WPFMC takes a curiously different view. Instead of creating a problem, the rise of finning has actually solved one, it says! "The Magnuson Act requires Councils to minimize bycatch in federally managed fisheries," the WPFMC told Hawaii's legislators. "If shark finning is stopped in the Hawaii longline fishery, this will actually increase bycatch, since none of the shark is used. UTILIZATION, EVEN OF ONLY A PART OF A FISH IS BYCATCH REDUCTION." (emphasis added) Okay let's make sure we've got this straight. If fishermen hook sharks as bycatch and release them al ive, they are increasing bycatch. If they kill the sharks for their fins and dump the carcasses at sea, they are reducing the bycatch. What the WPFMC is doing is turning the Magnuson Act bycatch-reduction requirement inside out. The law actually says that the first priority of fishery managers is to adopt measures to avoid bycatch and then, if bycatch cannot be avoided, to minimize mortality. Tens of thousands of sharks were being caught in the Hawaiian longline fisheries before it became profitable to fin them. Sharks are still bycatch; they just are no longer unwanted. Longliners still can't control how many sharks they hook, but they can control how many of these fish they kill. If the lucrative bounty for fins means fishermen will kill as many sh arks as they catch, we've got to take the profit out of it. PRECAUTIONARY PLAN PROPOSED At the root of WPFMC's apparent indifference to the shark problem is it's belief that blue sharks are not as susceptible to overfishing as most other sharks, and that the fish'es highly migratory nature makes them less vulnerable to intense fishing pressure on a regional level. While both statements are true, they do not support the council's position. Just because the blue sharks mature at an earlier age (four to six years) and produce larger litters (25 to 30 pups) than, say, the large costal species (e.g., dusky, hammerhead, sandbar) whose populations have been so depleted in the Atlantic, that doesn't make them immune to overfishing. When compared with the slowest growing and least-prolific fish in the sea, blue sharks may seem mighty resilient. But we shouldn't take too much comfort in the fact that their growth rate and reproductive capability is more similar to that of tunas and billfishes, fish we've had no trouble overfishing. As for the impact of fishing in Hawaii's waters on a shark that covers more ocean than any other, let's keep two things in mind. First the U.S.,through the WPFMC, has jurisdiction over fishing, not just around the Hawaiian Islands, but throughout the waters north and south of an island chain that stretches for another thousand miles west to the U.S. Territory of Guam, Second if the council is correct that the 100,000 sharks killed in the Hawaiian fishery amounts to only a tiny fraction of the global shark-fin trade, that means local populations are not likely to be replenished by immigrants from s urrounding areas, as the WPFMC suggests, since they are under even greater pressure elsewhere. In November 1998, the National Coalition for Marine Conservation (NCMC) helped initiate a national effort to presuade the WPFMC to adopt a precautionary plan for managing sharks. NCMC proposed that te council include in its Large Pelagics Fishery Management Plan a prohibition on finning and conservative landings quota set at the 199301994 levels (about 1.7 million pounds) until better information is available on the status of blue and other sharks. This proposal to protect Pacific sharks was endorsed by seven national environmental organizations, including members of the Ocean Wildlife campaign, as well as Salt Water Sportsman magazine. In addition the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is on record as being in favor of a ban on shark finning in all U.S. waters and although acknowledging no evidence to date that blue shark nmbers are declining (few studies have been done), the agency expressed concern "about the potential for long-term adverse effects to this species." To its credit, the WPFMC is committed to improving regional efforts at data collection and management through multilateral agreements in the central and western Pacific. But these efforts aren't likely to yield limits on shark fishing any time soon. In the meantime, the council continues to downplay the need for domestic action. local fishermen and conservationists frustrated by the council's attitude sought help from the only other authority they could, the Hawaii Legislature. A state law prohibiting the possession or trade in shark fins was the only other means available for stoping the cruelty and waste and giving sharks protection from unregulated fishing. National organizations. Including the NCMC offered their support. But when the bill failed to pass, before the legislature recessed in May, the focus swung back to the WPFMC. Renewed efforts are underway to persuade the council to adopt protective measures as soon as possible. The council is being urged to work with the state of Hawaii to implement a comprehensive ban on finning and a freeze on catches at conservative levels. If the WPFMC continues to drag its feet, support for a shark bill will be stronger than ever when the state legislature reconvenes next year. ----------------------------------------- Ken Hinman is President of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation in Leesburg, Virginia. you can visit the NCMC web site at www.savethefish.org ------------------------------------------- [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
|
Forum timezone: GMT-8 VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB: Before posting please read our privacy policy. VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems. Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved. |