Predators as Prey

Global Decline of Sharks

Published in January 2021, the first global census of shark and ray populations revealed that the abundance of these species has plummeted by more than 70 per cent since 1970. This decline has been more rapid in tropical waters than in temperate zones. A separate study of Queensland’s coastal reefs found that numbers of large sharks, including great whites, tigers and hammerheads, fell by at least 75 per cent during the same period.

There are numerous pressures on shark populations, including ship strikes, oil and gas drilling, climate change, pollution, habitat degradation, control programs (culling, drum lines), and the impact of fisheries on the seabed and prey species. But the single biggest threat is over-exploitation by targeted commercial fishing (legal and illegal), incidental bycatch and ‘finning’.

Overfishing and Bycatch

Since the 1970s, fisheries have spread rapidly across the world. Fishing fleets have grown bigger, and advances in technology and equipment enable the modern industry to fish harder and further afield. In the past, only a few oceanic shark species were targeted, primarily for their high-value meat. But, due to the high and growing demand for shark fins and declines in traditional food fish, more species are being fished for both meat and valuable fins.

It has been estimated that, over the past 50 years, the explosion in mass, industrialized fishing has resulted in an unregulated three-fold increase in the global catch of oceanic sharks, yielding 100 million sharks per year — almost 200 sharks per minute. More than half of all identified sharks caught are large species. Australia's commercial shark fishing industry catches over 1200 tonnes of shark each year, of which 130 tonnes are great whites.

Some fisheries intentionally target sharks, but nearly half of the annual haul worldwide is unintended bycatch from fisheries seeking more tuna, swordfish and other billfish. The NSW prawn trawling industry takes 64 tonnes of shark as bycatch each year.

Sharks are particularly vulnerable to overfishing because of their low reproductive capacities. They are relatively long-lived (30–65 years), slow to reach sexual maturity (11–21 years), have long gestation periods (typically 9–18 months) and produce few offspring. About 12 per cent of live-bearing sharks (88 species) suffer capture-induced parturition (premature birth and abortion) when caught. The intensity of harvesting over recent decades is overwhelming sharks’ capacity to replenish populations, which are dwindling as a result.

Shark Finning

Put simply, shark finning is the practice of removing the fins for separate sale. It is commonly done at the time of capture — the fins are sliced off while the animal is still alive and its unwanted body is thrown back into the sea, where it dies slowly and painfully. Unable to swim, the shark suffocates or dies from blood loss, its carcass then eaten by scavengers. 

Rightly characterised as inhumane and wasteful, live shark finning is banned in the territorial waters of many countries, including Australia. But this abhorrent practice continues in high seas fisheries, untrammelled by international laws or industry management, to claim an estimated 73 million sharks. Although about a dozen species are commonly targeted for their fins, any shark is fair game, including several endangered ones that are killed at the rate of almost 3 million every year — even sharks caught accidentally are routinely killed for their fins.

Shark finning is largely driven by the high market value of the fin — up to $1100/kg — while the large fins of whale sharks and basking sharks are coveted as trophies and command as much as US$20,000 each. Although it is the most expensive seafood product by weight, the demand for shark fin has risen dramatically in the past two decades, and supports a robust global trade valued between US$540 million and US$1.2 billion.

The high value and increased market for shark fins creates a huge incentive for fishermen to take only fins — between one and five per cent of the animal’s weight — and discard the far less valuable carcass, leaving room in the ship’s hold for the more valuable meat of tuna or swordfish. Hong Kong is the world’s largest importer of shark fin, receiving about half of the global production. 

Shark fins are particularly sought after for traditional Chinese medicine and shark fin soup which is considered a delicacy. Costing as much as US$100 a bowl, the soup is served at important events such as weddings, birthdays, business banquets and during Chinese New Year celebrations. To decrease the cultural value of fins, the Chinese government ceased serving shark fin soup at official banquets in 2012.

While it may be popular as a symbol of prosperity and good luck, and considered by some to increase virility and promote long life, the soup has virtually no nutritional value apart from the broth used to flavour the otherwise tasteless key ingredient. In fact, recent studies have found that, far from being beneficial, shark fins in some species contain high concentrations of a neurotoxin known as BMAA, which has been linked to several degenerative brain disorders including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease. They are also high in mercury, which is concentrated and elevated by the treating and drying process.

Not all shark fins are taken illegally or by the awful ‘finning’ process. In Australian fisheries, it is an offence for fins to be removed from the shark at sea, or to possess shark fins on a commercial fishing boat without having the whole shark on the vessel. Under a policy known as 'Fins Naturally Attached', the whole shark must be brought back to port with the fins attached, and offloaded to a licensed fish receiver. The animal is then processed, with its various parts, including fins, going to different markets.

Shark Control Programs

In Australian waters, shark populations are under considerable pressure from state government-sponsored shark control measures taken in response to, or to prevent, attacks or perceived threats to human safety at popular beaches. In this context, ‘control’ is a euphemism for ‘cull’ — the deliberate, and often indiscriminate, killing of sharks. 

Shark control programs in New South Wales and Queensland are at least partly responsible for the depletion of many species along the eastern seaboard.

Control programs use gill nets or drum lines, or a combination of both. Shark nets are designed to entangle sharks, while drum lines are unmanned traps (suspended from a floating barrel) that lure and capture large sharks using large, baited hooks. Both devices are designed to kill and sharks that survive capture are shot.

In recent years, SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-in-Real-Time) drumlines have been deployed in New South Wales and Western Australia. Based on the traditional drum line design, they include technology that can alert rangers to the capture of marine life, who can then attend the device and release the animals, if sea conditions permit. If a shark is caught, it is tagged with a transmitter and relocated further offshore. Non-targeted animals are released immediately. 

Proponents of shark control programs point to statistics that show a dramatic reduction in the incidence of shark attacks at beaches where they are installed. Traditional capture methods, they say, remain the most effective means of protecting humans at popular coastal beaches. Organisations that support such programs include the Queensland and NSW State Governments, Surfing Australia, Surfing NSW and Surf Life Saving Queensland.

However, shark culling continues to be opposed by environmentalists, conservationists, scientists and animal welfare advocates, who decry the toll taken on shark populations and other marine life. In the largest shark culling program in Australia, which embraces the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland authorities have killed about 50,000 sharks since 1962. Most of these were harmless, but many were great white, grey nurse and other sharks that are protected under national legislation. The program has also killed more than 8000 marine animals as bycatch, including over 5000 turtles, more than 1000 dolphins, nearly 700 dugongs, 442 manta rays and 120 whales, all of which are federally protected species. In New South Wales, some 15,000 marine animals were killed in shark nets between 1950 and 2008.

Critics of such programs describe them as environmentally destructive, unethical, outdated, cruel and ineffective. Culling policies have also met with widespread condemnation from the scientific community, which maintains that there is no evidence to show that culling sharks will prevent attacks and increase safety.

Public sentiment in Australia seems opposed to shark control programs of the kind pursued by state governments to date. A 2014 poll indicated that 80 per cent of Australians did not approve of shark culling and, in 2018, more than 7000 Western Australians signed a petition demanding that a planned SMART drum line trial be abandoned.

In 2018, the Humane Society International (HSI) launched legal proceedings in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to compel the Queensland Government and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to remove 173 drum lines from the GBR World Heritage Area. The HSI argued that shark culling was inconsistent with the main objective of the marine park, which is to provide for the long-term protection and conservation of its environment, biodiversity and heritage values.

In April 2019, the AAT ruled in favour of the HSI on two principal grounds — the first that there was no scientific basis for the proposition that a lethal shark control program reduced the risk of unprovoked shark attacks at anything other than a theoretical level, and the second that such a program risked causing significant harm to the ecology of the reef by removing apex predators from the ecosystem. The Queensland Government’s appeal to the Federal Court of Australia was dismissed. The drum lines were removed from the GBR but remain in use elsewhere.

Non-lethal shark control measures that have been used in Australia and overseas include electronic deterrents, aerial shark-spotting drone patrols, an Eco Shark Barrier beach protector, sharks tags and associated alarm systems at popular beaches and smart phone applications which use social media to advise the community of where sharks are spotted.

International Conservation Status

The IUCN produces a Red List of Threatened Species that includes more than 100 sharks, of which 31 are variously classified as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable.

Many of these species also receive global protection through trade restrictions under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). CITES is a multilateral treaty that aims to ensure that international trade in designated species does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild. To date, 169 countries, including Australia, have agreed to be bound by the Convention.

Appendix I to CITES lists animals that are threatened with extinction, and commercial trade in wild-caught specimens of them is banned or permitted only in exceptional circumstances. This list includes hammerheads, tigers, bulls and whale sharks, among many others.

CITES Appendix II lists species that are not currently threatened with extinction but may become so unless trade is strictly regulated. These animals and their products cannot be exported unless it can be shown that their exports will not affect the survival of these species in the wild. Sharks listed in this category include the great white, scalloped hammerhead, oceanic whitetip, shortfin and longfin mako.

Under the auspices of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), to which Australia is a party, the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks (MoU) was developed and came into effect in March 2010. Through intergovernmental discussion and scientific research, the MoU aims to improve understanding of migratory shark populations, key pressures and habitats, and to coordinate current and future actions to conserve these species. Six out of the seven species covered by the MoU occur in Australian waters.

Australia’s EPBC Act

In Australia, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the Act) is the principal legislation for protection and management of nationally and internationally important plants and animals. It provides for the classification of threatened species in line with criteria specified by the IUCN Red List.

Under the Act, marine species listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered are ‘no take’ animals, meaning they cannot be caught, killed, traded or exported. These prohibitions apply to the great white and whale shark (both vulnerable), the northern river shark (endangered) and the grey nurse (critically endangered) — even though many of these animals are indiscriminately snared in state-sponsored control programs. 

However, the Act also contains a unique category of ‘conservation dependent’ (CD) which applies to eight marine species of commercial significance, including school shark and scalloped hammerhead. Both of these species are Red Listed as critically endangered, meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild in the immediate future, but under the Act’s CD classification they are fair game and may be legally harvested by commercial fisheries (The whitefin swellshark, endemic to Australian waters, is also Red Listed as critically endangered but doesn’t rate a mention under the Act and is afforded no protection of any kind).

Marine conservationists have lobbied vigorously for the removal of this aberrant CD category from the Act because it misrepresented the actual conservation status of the affected species. Submissions for urgent reform were made to Graeme Samuel in his 2020 review of the legislation but his interim report to the Australian Government contained no recommendation in relation to the CD category.

#GIVEFLAKEABREAK

The exposure of critically endangered shark species to ongoing commercial exploitation in Australian waters prompted the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) to launch its #GiveFlakeABreak campaign in early 2021.

The campaign has several objectives: to raise awareness of the urgent need for shark conservation; to alert consumers to the loophole in Australia’s national environment laws that permit the harvest of endangered sharks; to highlight the inadequacy of product labelling that allows meat from endangered species to be marketed under the generic name ‘flake’; and to encourage consumers to change their preferences to sustainable alternatives to give shark populations the chance to recover from over-exploitation.

According to a 2020 survey, one in three Australians are not aware that the humble ‘flake’ is actually shark meat. In Australia, flake is sourced primarily from abundant gummy shark and rig shark, neither of which is endangered. The Australian Fish Names Standard (AFNS) indicates that ‘flake’ should only reference these two species.

However, due to the depletion of Australian stocks, demand for shark meat is increasingly filled by many other local species and imports from South Africa, which is overfishing gummy sharks and exploiting critically endangered school sharks.

The problem is compounded and perpetuated by the fact that Australian consumers simply don’t know what they are buying from the fish shop, cafe or supermarket. They could be consuming endangered sharks without realising it. The AFNS is a voluntary scheme and places no legal obligation on suppliers or retailers to label shark meat for its species or fishery source. Making the AFNS mandatory would go a long way to resolving consumer uncertainty at the point of sale.

Fortunately, many retailers offer sustainable (green-listed) alternatives to mystery flake, such as King George whiting, farmed barramundi, mullet, wild caught Australian salmon and luderick, with little difference in price. The AMCS encourages consumers to use the ‘GoodFish Sustainable Seafood Guide’ in choosing sustainable options, available online and in app format.

And, consumers are showing an increasing willingness to exercise their buying power in different ways: switching to brands or products that say they help protect the oceans or fish; buying different seafood species; changing where they buy seafood; and paying more for sustainable alternatives. When looking specifically at consumer attitudes towards shark meat, a recent survey showed that 7 in 10 Australians would consider switching from shark to sustainable alternatives, once aware of environmental challenges associated with shark fisheries in Australia.

The Wrap

As apex predators, sharks maintain the balance of marine ecosystems by regulating species abundance, distribution and diversity. The decimation of these important animals can have economically and ecologically devastating consequences. Their continued exploitation needs to be made sustainable by better industry management and science-based catch limits on a global scale. Protecting sharks and allowing their populations to recover is essential to restoring the health of our oceans.

As conservationist, Mark Carwardine put it, “An ocean without sharks is unthinkable — like the Serengeti without lions.”