Endangered shark under attack from Cornish fishermen

Three years ago a Cornish fisherman had a rare stroke of luck. Off the coast of the county, on his 40-foot fishing boat The Prevail, he encountered a large shoal of sharks. Their streamlined, spindle-shaped bodies and characteristic pointed noses told him this was the porbeagle, an ocean-going, cold-water relative of the great white shark.

This was lucky for three reasons. Firstly, large aggregations of porbeagle are increasingly unusual. Secondly, the porbeagle is the most valuable shark in the ocean, worth around £2 per kilo or up to £500 per shark to the fisherman. It is worth a lot more by the time it ends up on a plate in top restaurants as "veau de mer". This is not a fish you can buy in a chip shop.

And, thirdly, because, despite scientific recommendations in 2005 and 2006 to close the North-east Atlantic fishery completely, porbeagle fishing is unregulated. Any fisherman lucky enough to come across large numbers of porbeagle - or for that matter any other shark except the basking shark or the great white - can catch as many as he likes.

And that is what this particular fisherman did. After a hard day's hauling using a six-mile long-line baited with mackerel, The Prevail returned to harbour weighed down with 64 adult porbeagles in the hold. Over the next nine days he caught another 63. His exploits were filmed and attracted a lot of attention, not all of it congratulatory. The Shark Trust, a conservation body, condemned the targeting of this particular shark as "short-sighted" and "potentially disastrous". The fisherman retorted, perhaps reasonably, that his catch was "a drop in the ocean" compared with the French. By all accounts it is the French that have the most cultivated taste for endangered shark.

The Shark Trust's dismay was based on a grim fact of biology. Sharks are slow growing, mature late and produce few young. Unlike cod, which lay thousands of eggs, the porbeagle gives birth to just four pups a year, and that is after a nine-month pregnancy. Allowing for the numerous hazards awaiting a young shark, this provides for a population increase of between 5 and 7 per cent per year. Once you factor in fishing pressure from fast modern vessels equipped with long-lines or vast seine nets, the shark is sunk. Far more are caught than can be replaced.

Last August, the Shark Alliance, an international coalition of NGOs concerned with the marine environment, published a dossier on European sharks. Based on catch data from fishing fleets, the figures tell their own story. Norway once operated a targeted fishery for porbeagle which peaked at 6,000 tons in post-war years. By 1960 the fishery had collapsed; in recent years, Norwegian vessels have landed an average of just 20 tons. Danish catch rates have similarly fallen from 1,500 tons in the 1950s to just 50 tons recently. French fleets were catching over 1,000 tons as recently as 1979, but by the 1990s this had shrunk to 300 to 400 tons despite the ongoing demand and improvements in fishing technology.

On top of that, unknown numbers of porbeagle are being taken by Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese long-line vessels. "We know that porbeagle meat goes into the international trade," says Sonja Fordham, policy director of the Shark Alliance. "But it is difficult to quantify it because customs data records it simply as 'shark meat' or 'shark'." The Shark Alliance is in a quandary. "If the porbeagle was listed on Cites [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species] then fisheries would have to supply trade data," says Sonja. "But we need better trade data to bolster the justification for listing." It's a catch-22.

The regulation of commercial fishing is based on stock assessment. In Canadian coastal waters, where the porbeagle fishery is regulated, reliable stock data indicates a decline to 11 per cent of the former level. The recent annual catch has been around 180 tons, less than the total allowable catch, which means that the fishery has effectively collapsed. In the North-east Atlantic the data is less complete but enough to indicate that landings have decreased by 85 per cent since the 1930s.

Meeting in Oxford to discuss the global plight of migratory, open-sea sharks, the Shark Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) agreed that practically every species of large shark found in European waters was heading for extinction. The group proposed radical changes to the IUCN's red list of threatened species. The porbeagle is now considered critically endangered in European and North-east Atlantic waters. Even the "common" thresher shark is now considered globally vulnerable, meaning that we could be the last generation to witness this shark leaping from the sea like a dolphin.

The problem is entirely man-made. "Despite mounting threats and evidence of decline, there are no international catch limits for open-sea sharks", said Sonja Fordham. We are blindly fishing them into oblivion. As far as the North-east Atlantic and the Mediterranean are concerned, the solution is in the hands of the European Union which has powers to impose regulation throughout the area. Indeed, pressed by the mounting evidence of declining stocks of porbeagle, and calls for a fishery closure by the scientists tasked with fishery management advice, the EU commissioner did eventually agree to act.

The EU regulates fishing by means of a Total Allowable Catch, known as a TAC. Last year the EU Fisheries Council was at least able to agree on the size of the TAC - an annual EU quota of 174 tons. This received faint praise from shark specialists, who would have preferred a total ban to give stocks a chance to recover. Nevertheless, the prospect of a management plan based on principles of sustainability - something that shark fisheries lack - offered a solution. According to the Fisheries Council's press release last December, the TAC on porbeagle was adopted.

Except that it wasn't. It transpired that the proposal had been torpedoed at the last minute by EU Fisheries ministers. The argument, it seems, fell apart on a technicality. TACs are made to conserve stocks, but the porbeagle had become too depleted to warrant a TAC. Behind the wordplay conservationists strongly suspect intervention by France and Spain. Despite growing public concern, it seems the EU Commission was swayed more by self-interested fishing lobbies than the arguments of conservationists and scientists.

In the danger zone

PORBEAGLE SHARK

Type: Fast, powerful shark, closely related to the great white, but smaller and feeding solely on fish and squid.

Threats: Unregulated long-line fisheries. High demand as the world's most expensive shark meat. Inshore population exhausted.

Status: Critically endangered in North-east Atlantic and Mediterranean.

SHORTFIN MAKO

Type: World's fastest shark - but not as fast as modern fishing boats.

Threats: Over-fishing, especially by Spanish tuna vessels. Global catches doubled since 1990.

Status: Vulnerable in North-east Atlantic, critically endangered in Mediterranean.

BLUE SHARK

Type: Sleek, wide-ranging blue-grey shark. Regularly crosses the Atlantic.

Threats: Declines of 50 to 70 per cent in North Atlantic since 1990. No European or international catch restrictions.

Status: Vulnerable in the North Atlantic. "Near threatened" globally.

COMMON THRESHER SHARK

Type: Unmistakable scythe-like tail almost as long as body.

Threats: Caught mainly as by-catch one long-lines.

Status: Common no more. Considered vulnerable globally.

SPINY DOGFISH OR SPURDOG

Type: Small, slender shark with spiny fin.

Threats: Huge demand as "rock salmon" in fish-and-chip shops.

Status: Once the world's most common shark, now critically endangered in North-east Atlantic.

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