TAMPA - Environmentalists have filed a suit against the US Government to halt overfishing of sharks as demand grows worldwide for such delicacies as shark fillet and shark-fin soup.
The National Audubon Society, Earthjustice and the Ocean Conservancy allege that the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to prevent overfishing and
to rebuild coastal shark populations.
Loathed by swimmers, sharks have become more popular at the dinner table in recent years.
The increasing use of shark meat, coupled with the value of the fins as the key ingredient of Asian soups, has made them prized by commercial fishers along the US east coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
As a result, scientists say populations are declining rapidly.
For example, the sandbar shark, one of the most commercially popular species, has declined by about 80 per cent since the 1970s, says Sonja Fordham, a fish conservation manager with the Ocean Conservancy.
"The lawsuit is intended to get the Government to follow the law in terms of shark fisheries to rebuild the population. We need to manage them in a precautionary way for the public good."
The environmental groups said fisheries service managers "caved" to pressure from commercial fishers by suspending reduced shark quotas that it decided on in 1999 in order to settle a lawsuit filed by the industry.
Service managers were not available for comment.
Despite their reputation as "trash" or "pest" fish, sharks actually need more protection than some other species because they grow slowly, mature late and produce few young, leaving them vulnerable to overfishing.
"This combination of lacking restrictions and their strained reproductive capacity leads to troubled populations not just here, but all over the world," says Sonja Fordham.
Sharks were the focus of bad publicity last year when two swimmers were killed off North Carolina and Virginia and an 8-year-old boy had his arm torn off by a shark near Pensacola, Florida.
But experts say shark attacks on humans are relatively rare and result from increasing numbers of people swimming in shark habitats.
- REUTERS
nzherald.co.nz/environment
