EU shark ban has 'crucified fishing industry in region', say fishermen

EU shark ban has 'crucified fishing industry in region', say fishermen

While the EU has attempted to manage its fleets' shark fisheries with quotas, recovery plans, minimum landing sizes and a "fins attached" landing policy, a conservation group is now calling for greater shark protection.

Oceana, founded in 2001 as an international marine conservation and advocacy organisation, says that sharks are less managed than other fish species and fear that their low reproductive rate and critical role in marine ecosystems means a drop in numbers could be catastrophic.

A new report by Oceana, The Race for Threatened Sharks, demonstrates how sharks are extremely vulnerable species and claims that European Union vessels have fished sharks of many species at home and around the world "without management for decades".

However, Westcountry fishermen say shark protective moves like the EU total ban on retaining the species of spurdog "has crucified the fishing industry in North Devon".

In North Devon a by-catch of spurdog was a valuable part of many fisheries like netting, long-line fishing and trawling and did add considerably to the fishermen's income.

In other regions like West Cornwall such sharks as porbeagle were an equally un-predicted and unwanted by-catch, mainly of netters.

"And what use is chucking them back dead? We don't want them but we can't not catch them," said one Cornish fisherman.

Globally, 21 per cent of shark populations are threatened with extinction, according to Oceana, and targeted and by-catch fisheries are the main threat to their survival.

Yet, "there's another side to that issue," said a North Devon fisherman.

"We just can't seem to make them understand that sharks like the spurdog will be caught whatever we do. When you have, as we have, invested so much money in a trawler we can't stop fishing."

He told how spurdogs normally congregate in "packs" and if a number enter the trawl net at the start of a four hour tow or during the following three and a half hours "then on hauling they will be dead, only if caught in the last 20 minutes or so of the tow will they survive and we cannot arrange what time they go into the net".

John Butterwith told of how the region's small inshore fishery previously directed at spurdog has ended, and many of those fishermen have changed to potting for shellfish.

Regulations for EU shark fisheries only began to surface in the last few years.