France spotlighted for role in future of endangered sharks

29 January 2006

Paris: Scientists, environmentalists and other members of the Shark Alliance are calling on France, one of the world's most important players in shark fishing and trade, to use its power to improve the outlook for these imperilled species.

The Shark Alliance is a coalition of more than 20 non-governmental organisations dedicated to restoring and conserving shark populations by improving European fishing policy.

Specifically, the coalition is asking France to follow scientific advice and end targeted fishing for endangered shark species, support new restrictions on international trade, promote a comprehensive EU shark fisheries management plan, and strengthen the EU shark finning ban.

"As a major player in shark fishing and consumption in Europe, France has an interest in the sustainability of shark populations, and yet is too often on the wrong side of shark fishing policies," said Eric Stéphan of Association Pour l'Etude et la Conservation des Sélaciens (APECS), a member of the Shark Alliance. "Given its influence within the EU and the broad reach of its fleets, France has the power to make or break a healthy future for sharks in Europe and around the world."

France recently took a bold step towards shark conservation when it led efforts for a moratorium on targeted fishing for deepwater sharks in the Southern Ocean by the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources thereby creating a rare model for precautionary shark management. The Shark Alliance is calling on France to take a similar role in Europe and support the development and implementation of an EU shark management plan.

Of particular concern is France's role in the depletion of spiny dogfish and porbeagle sharks. Both species are now considered Critically Endangered in the Northeast Atlantic by the IUCN (World Conservation Union) and scientists have repeatedly called for a complete halt to fishing. France is the only EU country operating a targeted porbeagle fishery. France ranked first in the world for spiny dogfish imports from 1995 to 2005. Germany, another top shark importer, has proposed both species for listing on Appendix II under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but France is one of the few EU countries that has yet to pledge support for the proposals which have been formally submitted on behalf of the EU to the CITES Secretariat.

On Monday 29th January 2007, The Shark Alliance and Association Pour l'Etude et la Conservation des Sélaciens will be holding a speaking event at Auditorium du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle at 3.00pm.

Sharks are especially vulnerable to overfishing and slow to recover from depletion because they generally grow slowly, mature late and produce few young.

French vessels take a variety of rays, catsharks, dogfishes and deepwater sharks, many of which are considered Threatened by the IUCN. Oceanic sharks are also taken incidentally by France's vast tuna fleet which operates from West Africa to the Indian Ocean.

Demand for shark fins, used in the Asian delicacy shark fin soup, often leads to "finning" – the wasteful practice of slicing off a shark's fins and discarding the carcass in the sea. The EU has banned finning for all its vessels, no matter where they fish, but serious loopholes in the regulation prevent its effectiveness.

In order to prevent shark carcasses being dumped at sea, most finning bans use a fin to carcass weight ratio calculation to ensure that fisheries are landing all the shark carcasses from which the fins have been removed and not simply dumping them overboard. At its most effective, this calculation uses scientific expertise to estimate the weight of fins relative to the rest of the body. The most robust calculations say this is a ratio of around two per cent fin to whole carcass. The EU's current regulation stipulates a maximum of five per cent.

Three species of sharks – white, basking and whale – are already listed under CITES, but the volume of trade in these species is dwarfed by that in spiny dogfish.

The value of EU spiny dogfish imports more than doubled from 1995 to 2005, from EUR1.6/kg to EUR 3.86/kg, as source populations have declined.

CITES listing (on Appendix II as proposed) would result in requirements for exporting countries to limit trade to levels that do not pose a threat to wild populations, but would have no direct effect on EU fishing quotas.

 
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