Hammerhead shark - credit: http://www.flickr.com/people/suneko/

Indian River County – The recent proposal to regulate shark fishing from the shore, may be at an impasse.

Following two months of heated discussions, the majority of the County Commission voted on Tuesday to reject Alan Polackwich’s, County Attorney, draft ordinance, without even allowing the courtesy of a revision.

“(Am I) disappointed? I can’t understand it,” Doug Distl, Carlton condominium manager commented, “This is Indian River County. We’re known for recreation, retired citizens and good things.”

Distl, who submitted his own proposal to ban the baiting and chumming of sharks off the beaches where people swim, has said that he didn’t want the county to become known as a shark fishing destination.

He has said that he is now going to focus on just getting the Indian River Shores, Orchid, and Vero Beach councils to at least regulate shark fishing.

In a 3-2 vote, the commissioners effectively shot down Polackwich’s draft. The motion to reject the proposal was made by Vice Chairman Bob Solari.

This rejection came after the commission had asked Polakwich to revise his proposal and put more focus into it on June 15th. Rather than banning shark fishing and chumming, the commissioners were after authority for lifeguards and sheriff’s deputies to order shark anglers to move their activities off the swimming beaches, and into remote areas.

The world record for a shark being landed by a fishing rod, has just been broken by two Danish fisherman. Per Jensen and Henrik Hansen successfully landed themselves an 880 kilo, 4 meter and 10 cm Eqalussuaq (also known as a Greenland Shark, or Somniosus microcephalus) in Norway’s Bokna Fjord. The Bokna Ford is in Rogaland County, between Stavanger and Haugesund.

The previous record for such a rod caught shark was said to be in the neighborhood of 775 kilos.

When asked about the adventure, and overall catch, Henrik Jensen responded, “It all went very well”.

The two Danish fisherman had made their way to the Bokna Ford, as they had recently heard that rather big Greenland sharks were prowling the waters. As to the bait? They simply used an empty potato sack full of plaice.

The Greenland shark is not generally considered edible as its flesh is toxic and contains timethylene oxide, which when ingested causes the same symptoms as being drunk as a skunk.

It is interesting to note that if the Greenland shark is prepared in a rather difficult process, it can be eaten, and is even considered a delicacy in Iceland (even more so in Greenland) where the fish, which is not normally a danger to humans in general, is closely tied into the Inuit folklore.

Florida anglers are being sharply criticized after a video of them free-gaffing a Mako shark off South Florida this week was made public on the Internet.

In the video, which was uploaded to Youtube and also displayed on the website of a Florida TV station (can be seen below), the anglers can be seen trying to gaff a free-swimming shark. The shark ventured close to the boat after being attracted to a swordfish that the anglers had alongside their vessel.

Since no rods or reels appear to have been used by the anglers as they captured the 748-pound Mako shark, they may have acted in violation of state and federal law. “I’d hazard that I’m not the first to pick up on these fine points of the law but if the video does indeed tell the full tale then these laws need to be enforced,” said Luke Tipple, a marine biologist and director of the Shark-Free Marina Initiative. “If however the fishermen can provide video evidence of them using PRIMARY tackle (i.e. hook and line) to initialize the capture then they would be within their rights to have landed the shark. If this turns out to be the case then I will instead turn this report into a cautionary tale of how the media should be more responsible in reporting on shark harvests, particularly when dealing with species considered by some to be globally threatened.”

The Maldives is planning to ban shark fishing in its waters, a move which would make the Maldives the first nation in the region to enact such a protective law.

The announcement was made by the Maldives Minister of State for Fisheries and Agriculture, Dr Hussein Rasheed Hassan, at the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Commission steering committee meeting in Mombasa.

“We have realised that it is more economically viable to leave the shark and other sea creatures unharmed because the country currently earns about $7 million annually from the diving industry,” said the minister.

In 1998, the Maldives imposed a 10-year moratorium banning shark fishing around seven atolls that received a lot of vacationers from abroad. Now, the country intends to expand the ban to include all reef shark fishing across the Maldives within a 12 nautical mile radius (22km).

During recent years, the number of sharks in the Maldives has plummeted due to overfishing for the lucrative shark fin market.

“The marine ecosystem is very fragile and that is why we have to regulate activities that coupled with the treats of climate change could adversely affect the major sources of income for the country,” Hassan explained.

The Maldives is an island country consisting of a group of atolls stretching south of India’s Lakshadweep islands. Despite having a population of no more than roughly 300,000 individuals, the Maldives receives over 600,000 tourists each year.

Scientists tagging sharks off the Irish coast have tagged a surprisingly high number of Basking sharks this year: 50 specimens in just three days.

“I would normally expect to be lucky if we tagged 50 in a whole year,” said Dr Simon Berrow of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group.

Basking SharkA record

Together with National Parks and Wildlife Service conservation ranger Emmett Johnston, Dr Berrow set out earlier this week to tag sharks off Donegal, as part of a project funded by the Heritage Council.

“In two hours last Monday we tagged 23 sharks, and we found 19 the following day – four of which had been tagged the day before,” Dr Berrow said. By the third day, they had tagged their 50^th basking shark.

Basking sharks were once a significant source of income for Irish whalers and the coastal towns of Galway and Waterford did for instance have street lights lit with basking shark oil as early as the 18^th century.

The importance of Basking sharks in Irish culture is evident in the number of names and monikers give to these peculiar creatures. In Irish, this “monster with sails” is known under the names Liabhán chor gréine (Great fish of the sun), Liop an dá (unwieldy beast with two finns) and Liabhán mór (great leviathan) – just to mention a few. The epithets “Fish of the sun” and “Sunfish” both pertains to its fondness of swimming just under the surface.

In the mid-1970s the Irish stopped their whaling, but the problems weren’t over for these sharks since they frequently ended up as by-catch in drift nets; a fishing method now outlawed in Irish waters. In addition to this, Norwegian whalers continued to hunt for shark off the Irish coast until 1986.

The Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is a protected species in Great Britain but not in Ireland. However, the European Union has just placed a moratorium on fishing for Basking sharks in these waters.

If you spot a Basking shark in Irish waters, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group would very much like to know any details about the sighting. You can find more information at www.baskingshark.ie.

Want to know more about Basking sharks and where they head when the Northern Seas become too cold for comfort? Check out our earlier blog post on Sharks of the Caribbean.

Shark fin soup has traditionally been a must-have among well-to-do Asians and an essential part of the menu at commemorative dinners, such as wedding banquets and New Years celebrations in countries like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, as awareness grows about the precarious situation many species of shark are facing in the wild due to over-harvesting; many Asians – especially young ones –are substituting the shark fin soup with alternative dishes at their celebratory events.

Singaporean groom Han Songguang and his scuba diving bride are just one example of this trend; when they tied the knot in December last year they served their guests lobster soup and placed explanatory postcards depicting a dead shark on each seat.

“If we can do our part to save ‘X’ number of sharks … why not?” said Han, a geography teacher.

A symbol of wealth and status in several Asian cultures, shark fin soup consumption has traditionally been a delight available for a comparatively low number of Asian upper-class families only. Hand-in-hand with rising affluence in East Asia and the development of a prosperous middle class segment of society, demand has however soared rapidly in the late 20^th and early 21^st century and about 20 percent of all shark species are now endangered, partly due to them being over-fished to satisfy the Asian markets.

“They live a long time. They have a low reproductive rate. In other words they produce just a few young every year or every few years. So you just can’t take a lot,” says Yvonne Sadovy, a biology professor at the University of Hong Kong.

As more and more young Asians opt for lobsters and other alternatives to shark fins, market demands have dropped noticeably in recent years. After peaking at 897,000 metric tonnes in 2003, the world wide shark consumption has sunk to 758,000 in 2006, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation. British wildlife group TRAFFIC says shark fins now make up an increasingly small percentage of the total consumption.

“Students and people in their 20s wouldn’t go to a shark eatery, and $15 for a dish is no cheap price,” says Joyce Wu, programme officer with TRAFFIC.

Shang-kuan Liang-chi, a National Taiwan University student agrees. “University students never go in there,” he says, referring to a shark fin restaurant near campus.

The decline is not only due to shark fins becoming increasingly out of vogue among environmentally concerned youngsters; the global financial crisis and its effects in Asia has caused many Asian to cut down on restaurant visits or order less expensive dishes.

Another sure sign of the declining popularity of shark fin soup in Asian is the menu for Singapore’s Annual Chefs’ Association dinner – it is now completely void of shark fin dishes.

“It is much harder to stop serving shark’s fin in our restaurants as the consumers still demand it. However, in our personal capacity, we can make a stand,” said Otto Weibel, a food manager at one of Singapore’s top hotels.

While conducting magnetic experiments in 2006, the company SharkDefense Technologies discovered how certain metal alloys would keep sharks away by affecting the shark’s electric sense.

After extensive testing on several different shark species, SharkDefense Technologies and HEFA Rare Earth Canada, Co. Ltd are now finally ready to put their product on the market: metal alloy thingamajigs that keep sharks away from fishing gear by generating a small voltage as soon as the product is placed in saltwater.

Unlike popular food fishes like tuna and swordfish, sharks are equipped with an electric sense organ and will therefore stay clear of this type of voltage generating alloys. By placing a small piece of metal alloy near the bait at each hook, you cause sharks to shun your fishing equipment like the plague. This is a win-win situation for fishermen and sharks, since the fishermen will able to focus on more expensive target species and the sharks will avoid getting entangled in fishing gear and die.

Continuously submerged in seawater, the metal alloys continue to emit electricity for up to 48 hours.

The Spanish police have seized 11 tonnes of shark fins in destined to be shipped to Hong Kong.

According to a statement from the police, the shark fins did not appear to come from a protected species but were found in a warehouse that lacked authorization to export shark fins.

The confiscation took place in Huelva in south-western Spain, to where the fins had been transported from a port in Galicia in the north-western part of the country.

The shark fins have an estimated value of 136,800 Euros (186,335 USD). European Union countries are the main exporters of shark fins to China.

In many markets, shark meat does not yield a high price and fishermen therefore normally remove the fin from caught sharks and let the shark back to the sea. Without its fin the shark can no longer swim and will sink to the bottom where it either dies from suffocation (sharks need to swim to breathe) or gets eaten alive by other aquatic animals.

In parts of Asia, shark fins are used in folk remedies and to make traditional shark fin soup. As the standard of living rises in China, more and more people can afford to purchase shark fins and one pound of dried shark fin can now retail for over 300 USD.

Sharks are facing extinction on large parts of the Great Barrier Reef as well as in other parts of the world. The reason for this is ruthless fishing to provide the Asian markets with shark fins. The fins are removed from caught fish while they are still alive and the sharks are then flung back into the sea where they sink towards the bottom and to their death. Most shark species need to swim to be able to breathe and drowns after they have been thrown back without their fins. A very high number of sharks fall victim to Asian shark fishing vessels and end their life this way each year. This doesn’t just threaten the world’s shark populations but also constitutes an enormous waste of resources as most of the sharks (everything except the fins) is simple flung back into the sea without being used.

Many sharks fishing vessels ignore fishing rules and fish in protected areas and marine preserve which have led to plummeting shark populations in marine preserves as well. This does not only leave us without protected shark populations that might help restock the populations outside the preserves but also put stress on the eco system within the preserves. This might put other species in the preserves at risk as well.

An example of this illegal fishing was recently reported in north Queensland were a research trip done by Richard Fitzpatrick and his team showed that it was hard to find and catch sharks on the reefs off Cairns and Port Douglas.

Mr Fitzpatrick says the decline is the result of over-fishing on the reef.

The team found dead sharks thrown back into the sea in protected areas in the Cairns and Port Douglas, area like the cod hole which might indicate that shark fishing vessels fish within protected areas. They also found sharks that simply had their tail fins cut of and most likely had been killed by people who don’t like sharks and that simply wanted to kill them. It is however possible that they where fished for their tailfins and that they where caught for commercial reasons but if that was the case it is likely that the other fins would have been harvested as well.

The shark fin trade is to a large extent a black market and no one has a good overview of it and how big it really is. This is making it extremely hard to take actions against this fishing and the only way to create effective shark preserves might be to create large patrolled areas that are off limit to all non authorized vessels. A more desirable method to target the problem would be campaigns designed to limit the demand for shark fins. The question is how and if an effective campaign like that can be created,