Endangered Shark Species Facing Extinction

Nine species of shark will get added to the world endangered species list as researchers warn that seas are getting emptied of all the fish through Finning and over fishing.

The hammerhead scalloped shark is one such species that has declined by 98% during the previous 30 years. It will be appended to the globally endangered species list of the IUCN World Conservation Union.

Julia Baum is a member of the IUCN shark specialists and is with the Scripps Oceanography Institution in California. She said that we are looking at a high risk rate of extinction of some shark species within a few decades.

Other shark species to be appended to the IUCN endangered species list are the short fin mako, smooth hammerhead, big-eye thresher, and common thresher. Already there are 126 shark species as part of the IUCN's list.

Baum said that fishery operations now cover all areas of the planet and are intense enough to threaten these species everywhere.

Researches have shown that shark populations of the Atlantic have declined by 50% since 1970.

Sharks can get quickly extinct because of the long time they take to mature. Shark fins are prized in China with a price of £140 per kilogram. Eating of the shark fin is seen as a delicacy among Chinese rich and middle class people.

Fishing is the cause of a 90% drop in shark populations all over the oceans, and a 99% drop in the east coast of the US. The decline in numbers of predators like sharks can have sharp consequences on marine ecology.

Baum said that the declining numbers of sharks in the Atlantic after 2000 allowed populations of cow nose rays (sharks' prey) to explode thereby causing extinction of bay scallops in N Carolina.

The fishing of sharks in the international waters remains unrestricted. But there is a UN resolution that calls for limits on shark fishing and a total ban on finning sharks.

Sonja Fordham from the Shark Alliance said that though people think the sharks may be resilient to fishing, it has been shown that this is not usually the case. What is needed are efforts like setting up catch limits of sharks.

Some conservation efforts aimed to protect sharks will try to focus on some newly identified areas where sharks tend to congregate during migrations. For example, the hammerhead scalloped sharks migrate to coastal islands near Ecuador and Mexico.

The efforts aim to enforce reserves in these areas for protecting sharks and for providing the interested public with places to view sharks in their natural habitat.

One particular site between Mexico and Hawaii attracts many sharks and is now known as 'white shark café' among scientists. The sharks return to the same spot year after year.

Sources:

Thaindian News

The Telegraph