China’s shark fishing: unmonitored, unregulated, unmanaged, and unsustainable

From Nature.com: China’s shark fishing: unmonitored, unregulated, unmanaged, and unsustainable

Being a shark isn’t always easy. OK, you’re a top predator, but you’re also seeing your family and friends disappear every year, as fishermen haul them out of the water and cart them off to market.

One of the biggest of those markets is South East Asia, where shark fin soup is a particular delicacy, but there is a huge dearth of information on fishing in the region. Now Vivian Lam and Yvonne Sadovy, of the University of Hong Kong, have used historical information and interviews with modern fishermen to produce the first historical account of the region’s shark catch.

It’s a grim picture: although there are 109 species of shark historically present in the South China Sea, surveys of today’s markets found just 18 species. Of those animals that were found, 65% were below the size of sexual maturity.

“Serious declines have occurred in shark biodiversity and numbers in the northern sector of the South China Sea over five decades,” the authors write in Fish and Fisheries. “From 109 species recorded in southern China in the past, to only 18 species recorded in the current market surveys, the degree of decline should be considered catastrophic.”

All those interviewed in the study highlighted a drastic decline in shark abundance and diversity. They also said they had to travel further and fish harder to obtain the same amount of shark flesh. Their reports indicate that basking sharks and larger requiem sharks may even have been made locally extinct.

Critically, shark fishing within Chinese waters is “unmonitored, unregulated and unmanaged” note Lam and Sadovy.