Needle-teeth of Grey Nurse sharks were popular trophies in the 1960′s. Taking a set from that species today, in Australia, would guarantee a terrible penalty. The young lady is Tanya Binning - a famous surf girl of the era. Grey Nurse sharks made a dramatic return to the east coast of Australia in 1988. The population has been steadily increasing since. Unreliable out-of-date reports continue to circulate promoting a demise.
Opposition
Many of the arguments used by China, Japan, Russia and several North African countries to oppose the measure were expected to be recycled by delegates later this week when proposals to tightening regulations on the shark trade are considered.
China and Russia argued that shark populations aren’t suffering. Japan insisted that current measures in place are more than adequate. Developing countries like Libya and Morocco complained that any effort to protect sharks would damage the economies of poor fishing nations and burden them with expensive enforcement requirements.
The Chinese delegation said there was no scientific evidence that the shark’s survival is threatened and CITES was not the right forum to handle the issue. The Chinese would prefer to leave regulation to existing tools like the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and regional bodies which conservationists argue have failed to crackdown on illegal fishing and even uphold their own modest quotas.
There’s a lot of out-of-date information circulating. Consider these points first.
1. Fishermen prefer to catch marlin, swordfish, tuna – high value products.
2. Sharks take the baits intended for tuna, marlin, on lines many kilometers long.
3. Sharks, unable to swim, then drown. Unable to swim, they drown, dead in 95% of cases.
4. So, what to do with the dead sharks? Throw them away? Process them for $2-3 kilo?
5. Many (or most) countries, by law, now make fishermen bring whole sharks home, fins attached.
6. Shark meat is processed into fake fish products, crab sticks, fish fingers etc.
7. Shark fins are just a bonus, (as compared with a large tuna) crazy to wast them.
8. A new bait is being trialed, a bait that tuna take yet is distasteful to sharks. It’s expensive.
9. Fishermen see many sharks offshore and sincerely believe there is no detrimental shortage.
10. There is a decline in all other fin fish, world-wide this is accelerating.
11. Shark diving companies would have you believe all of the above shark info is untrue.
12. Same applies to self-promoting marine ‘experts’. Easy to be interviewed speaking ‘doom and gloom’ info.
13. Bottom line at Taipei Shark Conference 2002 “We (scientists) should speak more often with fishermen to help with our research.
A world decline in fin fish is resulting in small shark becoming acceptable as cheaper substitute species. Fins must not be removed at sea – a law for several years in most but not all countries.
WildAid organized the International Shark Conference in Taipei which focused on shark fining and brought about changes in fisheries laws. The published magazine for the conference is now available on line “The End of the Line”.
The picture of a recently fined shark was an error in that a blunt knife has been used and only the dorsal fin removed. Otherwise there is some excellent research material here.
After years of drought there was rain all along the east coast of Australia. The sharks that were thought to be on the brink of extinction suddenly came back by the hundred. The link between rainfall and sea life has not been studied, to my knowledge, at least not with shark populations.
Try counting the Grey nurse in this picture. I think there could be 21.
Comment
“I believe that the Grey nurse is not a threatened shark, there are still many congregations of the sharks that the so called know-all’s don’t know about, certainly in the area where I live. (North coast of New South Wales).
I have even seen a 7ft 6″ one that was caught in the lower section of the Clarence River and one that was caught in a trawler’s net just north of Yamba NSW on sand.
There are many places along the NSW coast that have not been dived on and would most certainly support the Grey Nurse shark. This is my belief and I stand to be correct. I have swam and dived in the ocean for the last 40 years. Geoff ‘Boots’ Towner 2 July 2010
When we began Fathom magazine in 1971 – dive shops had an attitude or sales line to customers quite different to today.
“There has never been a shark attack upon a scuba diver” was one line that helped sell goods. It was true for a while but eventually the inevitable happened. A scuba diver was ripped to pieces by a white pointer in South Australia – then more attacks on scuba divers followed.
Were the sharks being inadvertently trained? Nobody knows.
Back in 1970 sharks featured on the cover of dive magazines was an advertising revenue taboo.
It was a rule that the Australian spear fishing magazine magazine did not adhere to, but the leading USA magazine, Skin Diver avoided shark pictures.
Sharks were not good business for the fledgling scuba diving industry.
It shows how little knowledge existed back then of these predators.
LIFE magazine began printing an Australian edition in 1967 and sharks were featured in the first two or three issues. The above picture by Ron Taylor shows John H. (Editor of Fathom) about to fire a second .303 power head at The Big Island off Wooli, New South Wales (1965).
Fathom had a Hammerhead shark on the cover of issue #2 – which proved very popular.
Gradually Skin Diver changed it’s theme and others also realized that divers wanted as much information as possible about a creature thought to be the major hazard faced in the sea.
Today, diving with sharks (often from a cage) is a huge international money spinner. Even diving in an aquarium with ‘stupefied’ sharks is considered a big adventure deal for novice tourist divers, and it is.
Why stupefied? If the Grey Nurse shark looks as if it is ‘gasping for breath’ it probably is.
Sharks in captivity behave very differently to wild sharks in the sea. Especially sharks that have seen few divers.
(Below left) Flinders Reef, Cape Moreton, Queensland in 1965 (right) Point Lookout, North Stradbroke Island 1967 – Diver Rodney Fox was bitten by White Pointer shark in 1963, today is an established shark conservationist.