Starting on Sunday, the 175-nation Convention on the International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES), will consider separate proposals that would require
cross-border trade in these open-water predators be tracked and reported.
The small island nation of Palau, dependent on scuba tourism, along with
Sweden and the United States, have sponsored the measures, with backing from
Egypt and Rwanda. Japan, which led the successful drive to keep Atlantic bluefin
in its sushi bars, has said they should be voted down. Tokyo points to a lack of
data, and argues that Cites, meeting in Doha through on Thursday, is not the
right tool to oversee high-value commercial fauna. Scientists acknowledge a
paucity of data.
At the top of the marine food chain, most of these fearsome predators roam
the open seas, and there is no global system in place to monitor population
levels.
Of the 139 nations that have reported shark catches to the Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) since 2000, less than half list species, 'making
it difficult to assess the impacts of fisheries,' said Laurence Fauconnet, a
shark expert at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
But the studies that have been done paint a grim picture, indicating that
each year some 70 million sharks of all types are harvested. Sharks are
especially vulnerable to overfishing because most species take many years to
mature and have relatively few young. -- AFP
Shark Conservation 
