EDITORIAL : THE NEW STRAITS TIMES, MALAYSIA

Save the sharks

SABAHAN fishermen and restaurant owners involved in the shark's fin trade are up in arms this week. In response to the announcement by the state tourism, culture and environment minister that the state planned to ban shark fishing from next year, they said their internationally frowned upon business would be badly affected. Never mind the fact that Malaysia is Number 10 in the Top 20 list of shark-catching countries. Or that worldwide shark populations have dropped 90 per cent in the last half-century, or that 30 per cent of shark species are thought to be endangered. Or that the Top 20 are responsible for 80 per cent of the world's shark fishing, and Malaysia's annual contribution to this is 24,334 tonnes of shark.

Badly maligned in popular fiction by the 1975 Steven Spielberg movie Jaws and locally by loan sharks, real sharks are actually victims of humans. Their fins fetch between RM20 and RM30 per kilogramme. Once in soup, they cost even more. Little wonder then that fishermen find it more lucrative to catch sharks, slice off their fins, then discard the carcasses at sea; more room on the boat for fins. Since sharks are slow to mature and have few young, replenishing their populations is difficult.

In its National Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks, Malaysia is committed to ensuring shark sustainability, assessing threats to their population, as well as implementing harvesting strategies. And yet, catches are only recorded according to genus (shark, ray, etc) and not species. So what sharks are caught, where, and how much, is not known. If reporting mechanisms aren't improved, how are we to know whether our protection measures work, or that we are implementing our plan effectively? Sabah estimates that only 20 per cent of sharks spotted in the state 15 years ago are still in its waters.

Conservation education efforts do help in reducing demand. For instance, in Hong Kong, a recent study found that 78 per cent of respondents considered it "acceptable" to omit shark's fin soup from the menu, even at important events. But even if people refuse to see sharks as living creatures and important marine ecological markers, perhaps they can be persuaded to change their business strategy. In a study released last week on the economic benefits of shark tourism in Palau done by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, sharks were calculated to be worth more alive and swimming than in a soup pot: US$1.9 million (RM5.68 million) per shark over its lifetime compared with US$108 dead. Food for thought.