Europe’s most commercially important shark species, the spurdog (spiny dogfish), is severely depleted. In the UK, spurdog is sold as rock salmon or huss and used in the traditional British meal of fish and chips. In Germany, the meat is sold as Seeaal (sea eel) and its belly flaps are smoked to make the delicacy Schillerlocken. In France, fresh spurdog meat is sold as aiguillat commun or saumonette d’aiguillat.

Northeast Atlantic spurdog are found from the north of the Bay of Biscay to the Norwegian Sea. This population has been fished off Europe since the early 1900s, but catches have dropped sharply in recent years as populations declined.

Spurdog are also fished in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, although in much smaller numbers.

Unsustainable fisheries around the world target the reproductive females of the species. In 2000, after a decade of intense, unregulated fishing for Northwest Atlantic spurdog to feed European markets, the US population was depleted and the federal water fishery essentially closed. Spurdog fisheries based on a European demand for meat have since developed in the Canadian Maritimes, New Zealand, Argentina, and the western US.

The pelagic, wide-ranging porbeagle shark is sought primarily for its high value meat, although its fins are also used. It has been the target of intense, unregulated fisheries over the last century and is now seriously depleted. Vessels fishing porbeagles in the Northeast Atlantic have hailed primarily from Norway, Denmark, France and Spain.

Overall, landings from historically important fisheries around the UK and in and around the North Sea have decreased to low levels during the last 40 years, while catches off Portugal, west of the Bay of Biscay and around the Azores have increased since 1989. It is thought that fishing vessels have exhausted inshore populations and redirected their effort on previously less heavily exploited offshore stocks.

Spanish vessels take pelagic (or oceanic) sharks such as blues, shortfin makos and threshers both as bycatch and directly from the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. Increased targeting of pelagic sharks by Spanish longline fishermen appears to be the result of the decline of swordfish populations.

The traditional Portuguese longline fishery for swordfish operating in the Azores took increasing numbers of blue sharks in the mid-1990s, and this species accounts for an estimated 86 per cent of total landings.

Portugal, France, the UK and Ireland have net and trawl fisheries which also take pelagic sharks as bycatch. Small target fisheries for blue shark have operated off the southwest coasts of England and Ireland.

In previous decades, incidental catches of blue, mako and thresher sharks were common in Mediterranean longline fisheries, but have since declined – probably as a result of reduced populations. Today, such bycatch continues at significant levels in only a few places, such as their breeding grounds in the Alboran Sea. Illegal driftnets, primarily targeting swordfish in the Mediterranean, still take substantial numbers of pelagic sharks as well as several species of rays as bycatch.

Recreational rod and reel fisheries take pelagic sharks, particularly blues and threshers, from UK waters and the Mediterranean Sea. These are increasingly catch-and-release operations.

The immense, filter-feeding basking shark is found in cool waters around the world, including in the Northeast Atlantic from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Basking shark catches have been recorded from Norway, Ireland, Scotland, Spain and Iceland.

The basking shark has been hunted for centuries off Europe – early whalers sought their livers (which account for up to 25 per cent of their body weight) for lamp oil. Its meat has been used for animal feed and human consumption, and the skin for leather.

Fisheries in recent years have targeted the basking shark for its oil (now used for cosmetic and pharmaceutical purposes), meat (for food as well as fishmeal) and fins.

Most basking shark fisheries have been characterised by steep, long-lasting declines in catches, after the removal of hundreds to a few thousand individuals. For example, a basking shark fishery began off western Ireland in 1947. Catches peaked in the early 1950s and then declined by more than 90 per cent over the next 20–25 years. Revitalisation efforts in the 1970s failed despite high oil prices. The population was so depleted that it has yet to recover.

In recent years, EU basking shark quotas have been set at zero, but the species is still regularly killed as bycatch in trawl and pot line fisheries.

Increasing numbers of these species, primarily Portuguese dogfish and gulper sharks, were taken for most of the 1990s as new markets for their liver oil and meat developed. Landings peaked in 2003 but have since declined despite high fishing pressure, indicating extreme population declines. Scientists have recommended zero catch for Northeast Atlantic deepwater sharks.


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