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Hold
the shark fin soup
Jaws of man devouring global shark population
By David J. Craig
After seeing the blockbuster 1975 movie Jaws, the notion of sharks as fragile animals might seem a little hard to swallow.
However, the number of sharks is declining globally. Many thousands are killed every year, says Philip Lobel, a CAS professor of marine biology and a researcher at the BU Marine Program in Woods Hole, Mass. The decimation is nowhere more apparent than in Hawaii, where, for example, scores of sharks used to gather in a shallow lagoon and circle once a year. Hawaiians of old would demonstrate their courage and blind faith by walking among these sharks, and sacred structures were built on the shore. But the monuments -- and the legends -- are all that remain of the mystical spectacle.
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| The Micronesian Shark Foundation is seeking better protection for species such as the gray reef shark. Photo by Philip Lobel. | |
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“The sharks have been fished out,” says Lobel, who is trying to prevent the same thing from happening in the western Pacific islands of Micronesia. He recently helped form the nonprofit Micronesian Shark Foundation to protect the prehistoric predator, especially around the island of Palau, about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Lobel, the lead researcher for the foundation, wants to provide data on shark population, migration patterns, and mating habits to assist policy makers and conservationists in adopting legislation that will stop sharks from being overfished.
Fishermen who use biologically unsound practices to catch the creature, such as dropping gill nets and fishing from huge processing ships, are responsible for much of their decline. But Lobel says that unlike traditional overfishing problems, the plight of sharks in the western Pacific is particularly troublesome because of a rapidly growing trade in their fins. Shark fin soup, which used to be a cultural dish served on rare occasions, has become a high-priced delicacy at restaurants all over China, Korea, and Japan.
“The people of Micronesia, and Palau particularly, do not fish sharks, and they don’t want to fish sharks,” he says. “Sharks are worth much more alive to them than they are dead, because alive they are a key attraction to the ecotourism industry, primarily scuba diving. And ecotourism is a main part of Palau’s economy.”
But the voracious appetite for shark fin soup has threatened to collapse the dive industry in Palau, which has a worldwide reputation for pristine underwater habitats and for its many shipwrecks. The wasteful -- and cruel -- practice of finning, slicing off a shark’s fins while it’s still alive and discarding the animal back into the sea, is cutting deeply into an already small population.
“The problem with this type of exploitation is that it’s strictly a luxury commodity. It’s not like the problem of the bushmeat trade in Africa, where people are trying to feed their families,” Lobel says, referring to the slaughter of primates and elephants by forest-dwelling Africans, which is endangering wildlife there. “It’s a lot more difficult to say, ‘Don’t kill these animals’ to these people. But in the case of finning, it’s not a substantive food, not a staple of anyone’s diet.” He likens the practice to the overfishing of sturgeon to obtain caviar. “It’s needless,” he says.
The new foundation was launched by a local dive company, Fish ’n Fins, which also plans to raise awareness about sharks by arranging with dive shops in Micronesia to give slates to volunteer divers so they can record data on shark populations. Few researchers have previously examined sharks in the area. “Some of the basic questions are, for instance, how far do these sharks move between the different islands?” says Lobel. “Palau and Guam could set up fishing prohibitions and protect their waters out to three miles, but if the sharks migrate between Guam and Palau, they’re vulnerable to fishing when they’re out on the high seas. I got involved to help set up a scientific research program and apply the latest technology for tracking animals in the ocean to answer these questions.”
Although “save the sharks” doesn’t exactly engender the same kind of warm, fuzzy feelings as “save the whales,” Lobel is confident that the foundation’s work will help people begin to see sharks as animals to preserve, not fear. Indeed, he has often “swum with the sharks,” and he points out that while there are certainly sharks that dine on animals the size of humans, “most of the sharks that we’re working with are our size and feed on animals that are much smaller. If I saw a great white or a big tiger shark while I was diving, I would probably be a lot more aware, nervous, and probably crawling against the reef.” Still, it is man’s appetite for shark, rather than the Jaws stereotype, that reflects more accurately what is going on in the ocean today. Sharks are being decimated.
While studying sharks in Johnston Atoll, 700 miles southwest of Hawaii,
Lobel has witnessed an annual phenomenon similar to what used to occur
in Hawaii: hundreds of pregnant gray reef sharks circling in a lagoon.
If sharks are overfished here, this unforgettable image could become just
a memory as well. In Hawaii, fewer than 3,000 sharks were caught by fishermen
in 1991. Today the number is more than 100,000. “What has happened
in Hawaii could happen anywhere,” he says.
18
April 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations