Prized for Their Fins, Sharks Under Attack

Sharks are rarely far from mind in the archipelago state of Hawaii, encircled as it is by prime shark habitat. Yes, the now-and-again shark attack on swimmers or kayakers still pops up in the news to terrify tourists and locals. Civic flutters always ensue, followed by sober statistical reminders that the threat is infinitesimally low. At least to people.

Human attacks on sharks are another matter. And lately, thinking about the animals has taken a turn in the shark’s favor, chiefly because of a savory and costly broth.

Concern is growing about fishing pressure on Pacific Ocean sharks, primarily blue sharks, which seldom invade places where they threaten humans.

As Asia has prospered, so has its appetite for shark fin soup. These days, untold tens of thousands of open-water sharks are being caught by Hawaii-based fishermen or by international fleets that pass through. The fins are sliced off at sea and the rest of the animal tossed back, there being no ready market for its flesh or hide. Hong Kong retailers reportedly fetch up to $250 a pound for sun-dried fins; sales also flourish in Asian neighborhoods of California.

Cash Crop of Fins

The catch of Pacific sharks is without regulation or quota and, in fact, occurs mostly unintentionally as part of long-line fishing for tuna and swordfish. Until four years ago, most sharks were thrown back alive. Now, nearly all are “finned.” It has become a 1990s boon for crewmen, who sell the fins for bonus cash on top of their regular wages.

Fishermen and scientists say the volume is astonishing--with some long-line fishing boats setting 25 miles of hooks in a single day and then pulling up two or three sharks for every tuna, and one for every swordfish. Ashore, shark fin transactions are conducted in cash through specialty brokers, not established fish markets, and thus leave no reliable tally.

Preservationists, and now some fishermen, decry the waste of killing slow-to-mature animals for their fins alone. They note that heavy fishing in recent years has decimated Atlantic shark populations, with as yet unknown consequences for other marine life. In 1993, the federal government imposed restrictions on Atlantic shark fishing and tightened controls again this year. California is among the states that prohibit finning by their home fleets.

Conservationists worry that fishing pressure has shifted entirely to the open Pacific Ocean, which may be headed for a shark crash of its own.

“Worldwide, the incidental killing of sharks . . . has reached unprecedented levels,” says Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of underwater pioneer Jacques Cousteau.

Earlier this year, the Hawaii Legislature debated whether to enact legal protections for sharks. But it adjourned deadlocked after a board of regional fishery advisors asked for more time and study. The issue is sure to arise next session with even greater passion.

Sharks hold a special, and haunting, place in the imaginations of humans, but they are similar to other food fish in one regard: The technology of fishing and the frontier survival economics of high-seas fishermen can quickly outrace the regulatory reaction time of science and politics.

Preservationists fear that, like the swordfish and bluefin tuna of the East Coast and the big rockfish or abalone of the West Coast, Pacific sharks will be driven to the brink before regulators assemble the case necessary to act to preserve them.

One of those most versed in the matters of Hawaiian sharks is Kim Holland, a research oceanographer at the University of Hawaii. He recently testified before the Legislature against shark-finning. Holland says it should be outlawed and quotas imposed on all shark fishing.

“Because of the slow growth rates of sharks, there are no sustainable coastal shark fisheries anywhere in the world,” Holland warns. “They can be fished out much faster than they can reproduce.”

Why should a hungry world care about sharks? Doesn’t it stand to reason that fewer sharks in the ocean means the survival of more fish? Many scientists say the opposite may be true.

The Western Pacific Fisheries Coalition, a cooperative venture between environmentalists and Hawaii fishermen, has come to the defense of the shark on grounds that it is an essential component of a healthy ocean.

An ‘Apex’ Predator

Bob Endreson, spokesman for the group and president of the Hawaii Fisherman’s Foundation, says that anecdotal evidence and science, although incomplete, uniformly suggest that “apex” predators like sharks cannot be eliminated from the food web without harmful consequences. In Tasmania, for instance, an 85% reduction in sharks led to a population explosion of octopus, which soon all but wiped out the local lobster fishery.

In the open ocean, blue sharks are believed to prey not only on the sick and weakest of food fish, like tuna, but also on smaller sharks--thereby keeping the shark population itself in check. Perhaps, if larger sharks are eliminated by fishermen, swarms of smaller sharks will be left to feast on juvenile stocks of tuna, with potentially disastrous results for a region that produces most of the world’s remaining tuna.

“The thing is,” says Endreson, himself a commercial fishermen for 40 years, “we just don’t know for sure. Nobody really understands what the shark does.”