Concerns are mounting about South Africa’s plummeting shark population, with 400 000 sharks killed off the West Coast last year alone.
”The mismanagement of shark conservation in South Africa has left the species wide open,” warned Grant Smith, director of marine predator action group Sharklife.
Smith believes that the environmental affairs department’s marine coastal management is failing in its conservation duty. Sharks play a critical role in ecosystems and take years to mature, yet there are no closed seasons on shark fishing and no limits on the sizes caught. ”Any fishermen – a million have permits in South Africa – can catch a shark a day and leave it on the beach to rot without repercussions,” Smith said.
Partly because of alarmist movies such as Jaws, he said, many people still believed that ”the only good shark is a dead shark. We are missing the outcry that there would be, for instance, if Âdolphins were being killed.”
Smith’s concern is reinforced by a new report, by the World Wildlife Fund South Africa and BirdLife, that rings alarm bells about marine predators in Southern Africa, especially sharks. It says that more than seven million sharks and skates are killed every year off the Namibian, Angolan and South African west coasts by longline fishing.
This commercial fishing method uses hundreds, or even thousands, of baited hooks attached to a single line to catch mainly swordfish and tuna. The line can be up to 20km long. About 36 threatened shark species live along the coastline surveyed by the WWF.
The species most often caught as ”bycatch” in South African, Namibian and Angolan waters is the near-Âthreatened blue shark, the report said. Up to 20-million are killed annually in the world by fishermen.
Conservation group WildAid estimates that bycatch accounts for about 50% of all sharks caught.
The other 50% is due to shark finning to make the Chinese delicacy shark fin soup, an industry valued at R8,4-billion a year.
The WWF report estimated that longline shark fishing hooks about 267 000 sharks a year off Angola, Namibia and South Africa, where sharks are primarily caught for their fins. Recent statistics indicate that South Africa ships 19 metric tonnes of shark fin to Hong Kong a year.
Longline fishing also accidentally kills many other marine species, including 34 000 sea birds and 4 200 sea turtles a year off the three countries’ coasts, the report says. ”Bycatch is a substantial and a huge concern,” said Samantha Petersen, manager of BirdLife and the WWF’s responsible fisheries programme.
Last month, Science magazine warned that the great sharks faced extinction. Since 1972, the number of blacktip sharks had fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%.
Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot said that every population of major marine predators ”is now in freefall”. A report in Nature four years ago said that more than 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have vanished.
World conservation union, the IUCN, lists the majority of albatross, sea turtle and many sharks species as threatened with extinction. Fisheries bear much of the blame, the organisation says.
Two longline fishing industries currently operate in South African waters: the demersal fishery, which targets hake, and the pelagic fishery, which catches tuna and swordfish.
The third – the pelagic shark longÂline fishery – was due to close down in October last year. A delay in closure has been much criticised. Smith is livid that almost four years have passed since the industry was closed down, yet the government granted it another lease of life this year.
Red tape in the granting of permits by the marine coastal management has stalled the entry of shark longÂlining vessels into the tuna and swordfish fisheries.
Mava Scott, spokesperson for the department of environmental affairs, said there is only ”marginal” demersal shark fishing off South Africa’s coast.
Scott said his department was finalising new policies on marine predators. ”The policy on the management of seals, seabirds and shorebirds will be published and implemented shortly. We are also developing national plans of action for seabirds and sharks.”
Smith said his organisation has been waiting for the plans since 2000. He is also concerned about plans to increase South African tuna and swordfish fishery by 66% by awarding more permits, as this will kill more sharks.
The WWF report says the tuna and swordfish longline fishery catches 22 000 pelagic sharks a year in South Africa and 250 000 in Namibia. About 1,5-million demersal sharks and skates are killed by demersal longline Âfisheries.
Despite the rapid decline in shark numbers, Cites voted this week not to upgrade two sharks found in South African waters, the spiny dogfish and the porbeagle, to the status of appendix two, entailing a ban on trade. The dogfish population has declined by 95% and that of the porbeagle by 89%.
SA’s threatened marine species
Critically endangered
Fish and mammals: Largetooth sawfish; Leichhardt’s sawfish; smalltooth sawfish; wide sawfish; narrowsnout sawfish; leatherback leathery turtle; luth; trunkback turtle; coelacanth and gombessa
Birds: Spectacled petrel
Endangered
Fish and mammals: Bottlenose skate; spearnose skate; white skate; coalfish whale; pollack whale; Rudophi’s rorqual; sei whale; blue whale; Sibbald’s rorqual; sulphur bottom whale; common rorqual; fin-backed whale; herring whale; razorback; and the green turtle
Birds: Tristan albatross; northern royal; bank cormorant; Barau’s petrel; dusky grouper; sooty albatross; Indian yellow-nosed albatross; Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross; and black-browed albatross
Vulnerable
Fish and mammals: Gulper shark; Cape shark; piked dogfish; spurdog; oceanic whitetip shark; grey nurse shark; sand tiger shark; spotted ragged-tooth shark; grean white shark; gulper shark; deepwater spiny dogfish; Nilson’s deepsea dogfish; basking shark; white-edged rockcod; brindle bass; brindled grouper; giant grouper; Queensland groper; liver-oil shark; rig; school shark; snapper shark; soupfin; southern tope; sweet William; tiburon; tope shark; vitamin shark; whithound; fossil shark; snaggletooth shark; longfin mako; porbeagle; humpback whale; tawny nurse shark; sharptooth lemon shark; cachelot; pot whale; sperm whale; bowmouth guitarfish; mud skate; shark ray; whale shark; flapnose ray; Javanes cownose ray; giant guitarfish; whitespotted wedgefish; flapnose houndshark; leopard shark; zebra shark; black-spotted stingray; fantail stingray; giant reef ray; round ribbontail ray; speckled stingray; and porcupine ray
Birds: Cape gannet (pictured left); Atlantic petrel; southern royal albatross; wandering albatross; buller’s albatross; grey-headed albatross; Salvin’s albatross; rockhopper penguin; macaroni penguin; African penguin; southern-giant petrel; and white-chinned petrel
Source: IUCN Red List for Species and WWF