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Shark fact:
Most sharks are caught by fisherman in search of other fish (bycatch). Their valuable fins are cut off to make soup, and the live shark thrown back to die.
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Why are sharks and rays under threat?
The very characteristics which have made sharks and rays such successful and important species are now threatening their survival. They are adapted to a position at or near the top of the food chain in the marine environment. Each female only produces enough young to replace the population under low, natural levels of mortality. They cannot adapt by producing much larger numbers of young to replace the huge quantities now being killed by man. As a result, sharks and rays are now seriously threatened by unregulated fisheries.
Many targeted fisheries for sharks and rays have resulted in serious population declines.
- Basking shark and porbeagle fisheries in European waters have collapsed after just a few years of intensive fishing.
- The common skate, the largest ray found in European waters and once abundant in fisheries, is now scarce. It has disappeared completely from some areas, including the southern North Sea and the Irish Sea.
- The spiny dogfish, a small, common shark, has been seriously overfished.
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The largest threat to sharks and rays may come from their incidental capture in other fisheries.
- Over six million blue sharks have been taken annually from the world's oceans over the past few years, most as incidental bycatch in high seas fisheries for other species of fish.
- Overall, it has been estimated that some 100 million sharks have been taken annually from the sea in recent years. Most of these are landed from multi-species fisheries or taken as bycatch, rather caught by fisheries targeting sharks. The numbers of rays taken in fisheries have not been estimated.
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The growth in many of these fisheries has been driven, at least in part, by the recent huge expansion of demand in international trade for shark products, particularly for fins to supply the East Asian shark fin soup market.
It is now acknowledged that some species could actually be threatened with extinction if these trends continue.
Why should we save our sharks?
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