Sharks and rays to be given new international protections

25 August 2019

Countries have agreed to strengthen protections for 18 threatened species of sharks and rays, including those hunted for their meat and fins.

The proposal was passed at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) on Sunday.

The newly protected species include mako sharks, wedgefishes and guitarfishes.

A demand for shark fin soup is one of the driving factors in the depleting numbers of sharks in the ocean.

The proposal, which was tabled by Mexico and requires ratification this week, means that the species can no longer be traded unless it can be proven that their fishing will not impact the possibility of their survival.

The number of sharks killed each year in commercial fisheries is estimated at 100 million, with a range between 63 million and 273 million, according to The Pew Trust.

Makos, the fastest shark species, have almost disappeared completely from the Mediterranean and numbers are diminishing rapidly in the Atlantic, Northern Pacific and Indian oceans.

Although 102 countries voted in favour of the move, 40 - including China, Iceland, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand - opposed it.

Some argued that there was not enough evidence to show that mako sharks were disappearing as a result of fishing.

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Hundreds of sharks and rays tangled in plastic

JULY 5, 2019

by University of Exeter

Hundreds of sharks and rays have become tangled in plastic waste in the world's oceans, new research shows.

University of Exeter scientists scoured existing published studies and Twitter for shark and ray entanglements, and found reports of more than 1,000 entangled individuals.

And they say the true number is likely to be far higher, as few studies have focussed on plastic entanglement among shark and rays.

The study says such entanglement—mostly involving lost or discarded fishing gear—is a "far lesser threat" to sharks and rays than commercial fishing, but the suffering it causes is a major animal welfare concern.

"One example in the study is a shortfin mako shark with fishing rope wrapped tightly around it," said Kristian Parton, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"The shark had clearly continued growing after becoming entangled, so the rope—which was covered in barnacles—had dug into its skin and damaged its spine.

"Although we don't think entanglement is a major threat to the future of sharks and rays, it's important to understand the range of threats facing these species, which are among the most threatened in the oceans.

"Additionally, there's a real animal welfare issue because entanglements can cause pain, suffering and even death."

Read on

World's strangest sharks and rays 'on brink of extinction'

By Helen Briggs BBC News

4 December 2018

Some of the world's most unusual sharks and rays are on the brink of extinction because of threats such as commercial fishing, scientists have said.

A shark that uses its tail to stun prey and a ray half the length of a bus are on the list of 50 species.

The scientists say sharks have a bad image and people do not understand how important and threatened they are.

And losing even one of these "living fossils" would wipe out millions of years of evolutionary history.

"The biggest myth around sharks is definitely the perception that they are dangerous, that they are man-eating machines - they're not," marine biologist Fran Cabada told BBC News.

"There have been some negative interactions recorded but they are very infrequent and they're not intentional."

This is the first time sharks, rays and chimeras (fish with cartilage in place of bones) have been assessed for the Edge (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) of Existence programme.

Most sharks are at the top of the food chain, which makes them crucial to the health of the oceans.

Losing them would have a big impact on other fish populations and, ultimately, human livelihoods.

"They have very few relatives on the tree of life, so they are very unique and losing them will actually represent a big, big loss," said Fran Cabada.

Continued  

Pregnant rays tangled in trawler nets have small, sickly babies

16 May 2017

By Alice Klein

The accidental capture of pregnant rays in fishing trawls harms their unborn babies.

Rays often get tangled up in trawling nets dragged behind boats to catch large volumes of fish. They are usually thrown back into the sea, but being trapped and brought up to the surface can be traumatic — and sometimes fatal.

Those that survive can experience ongoing health problems and have undersized, sickly babies, found Leonardo Guida at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues.

The researchers collected 19 pregnant southern fiddler rays (Trygonorrhina dumerilii) from Swan Bay in Victoria off the south coast of Australia, and divided them into two groups.

One group was subjected to 8 hours of being dragged in a trawl net, followed by 30 minutes of air exposure in a crate to simulate commercial fishing. The other group served as a control.
Stunted growth

The trawled mothers lost weight and showed signs of stress, and their offspring were born 27 per cent lighter and 12 per cent shorter in length. Examinations of the babies’ blood also indicated that their immunity was reduced.

These effects could have been caused by the release of stress hormones during trawling, says Guida. These hormones may hamper the growth and impair the immune system of a developing fetus, he says.

The findings may have implications for the long-term survival of ray species, many of which are already listed as vulnerable or endangered, adds Guida. Undersized babies with compromised immunity are more vulnerable to predators and pathogens, and may have impaired fertility.

Trawl fishing could also have adverse effects on the offspring of other species unintentionally swept up in nets, such as sharks, says Guida. 

 

Continued

New global strategy to save sharks and rays

A group of international conservation organizations launched a new strategy today to combat the decline of sharks and closely related rays, while warning that the rays are even more threatened and less protected than the higher profile sharks.

The call for greater inclusion of rays in conservation action plans is part of “Global Priorities for Conserving Sharks and Rays: A 2015-2025 Strategy,” released today in conjunction with a Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) meeting on shark conservation currently underway in San José, Costa Rica.

While calling on countries across the globe to take urgently needed actions to conserve and rebuild vulnerable populations of both sharks and rays, the 10-year strategy document emphasizes that, as a group, rays – including skates, stingrays, sawfishes, guitarfishes and devil rays – should receive as much attention and investment as their better known relatives, the sharks.

The approximately 650 species of rays include shark-like rays, such as the critically endangered smalltooth sawfish and Brazilian guitarfish.

Continued ...

40% of Europe's sharks and rays face extinction, says IUCN

New red list classifies 7.5% of all marine species as threatened with extinction in first full assessment of the continent’s oceanic biodiversity

Arthur Neslen

Wednesday 3 June 2015 18.41 BSTLast modified on Thursday 4 June 201511.04 BST

About 40% of Europe’s sharks and rays are threatened with extinction, according to the authoritative red list’s first full assessment of Europe’s 1,220 marine species.

Where fish population trends could be measured, nearly a third were found to be in decline by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which publishes the list. The IUCN found 7.5% of all the continent’s marine species at risk of extinction – a number that jumps to 10% when ‘near threatened’ species are counted too.

The findings came on the same day as the World Bank warned of the economic costs of overfishing and the UN general assembly agreed on the need for a new treaty to protect marine life in the high seas.

“It is alarming that many commercially and ecologically important species continue to be at risk in Europe,” said Simon Stuart, the chair of the IUCN’s species survival commission. “We need to take urgent action to reduce target and incidental catches of threatened species, and to set and enforce fishing quotas based on scientific understanding of population declines.”

The IUCN identified overfishing as the primary cause of the decline in marine biodiversity, followed closely by bycatches – accidental fish kills – coastal development, and pollution.

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Rare rays' DNA mapped to prevent inbreeding

Marine biologists want to take DNA samples from 120 rays in European aquariums to find out how diverse DNA is within the species, which will give clues as to how inbred individuals are.

This information will allow aquariums to pair up breeding adults that are more genetically diverse in the hope they produce healthier offspring. Inbreeding within a small breeding group can cause stillbirths and shorten individuals’ lifespans.

Undulate rays – which are found in the Atlantic including around the UK, and the Mediterranean Sea – are listed as endangered on the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.

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A quarter of sharks and rays threatened with extinction

January 2014: A staggering quarter of the world’s sharks and rays are threatened with extinction according to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with ray species particularly at risk.

The study, the result of a collaboration of 302 experts from 64 countries and the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG), analysed the conservation status of 1,041 shark, ray and closely related chimaera species.

“Our analysis shows that sharks and their relatives are facing an alarmingly elevated risk of extinction,” says Dr Nick Dulvy, IUCN SSG Co-Chair and Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “In greatest peril are the largest species of rays and sharks, especially those living in shallow water that is accessible to fisheries.

Read on

Mantas, Devil Rays Butchered for Apothecary Trade Now Identifiable

Sep. 19, 2013 — Since dried filters from the mouths of filter-feeding rays hit apothecary shop menus in Asia -- the thought being that eating ground-up filters will cleanse one's liver -- there's been no way to know which of these gentle-natured rays was being slaughtered.

Unlike predatory rays that attack and crush prey with their mouths, the filter-feeder rays eat plankton particles, larvae and fish eggs that they sieve from seawater. Most lack barbs other rays are notorious for, and the filter-feeders are generally considered harmless, although one group is provocatively named devil rays -- they have horn like fins on their heads -- and the other group includes the monstrous-sized manta, measuring up to 23 feet (7 meters) across and weighing 2 ½ tons.

Now, scientists with the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories have discovered enough differences in the filters to be able to identify the giant manta and eight of the devil rays using the part from inside their mouth that has been dried and is being sold.

"There is no historical or traditional medical use of these filters and there's no scientific evidence they will help your liver filter out toxins. Still there are thousands of these ray filters in the markets, especially in Indonesia," said Misty Paig-Tran, who studied the filters in detail while earning her doctorate in biology at the UW.

Read on

Humpback whale freed from Queensland shark nets - But hundreds of sharks, dolphins and turtles not so lucky

Indiscrinate nets kill hundreds of sharks, turtles, dolphins and rays
August. 2012. The Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol's Marine Animal Release Team has successfully freed a juvenile whale from shark nets off the Gold Coast. Shark Control Program Manager Jeff Krause, from the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol, said the 8 metre long animal was moderately entangled in the nets.

"The Marine Animal Release Team was activated immediately once reports were received of the whale, and quickly assessed the best strategy to release the whale. Seaworld also assisted with the release," Mr Krause said.

"The release was complicated by the whale diving repeatedly under water, and the presence of two adult whales nearby. Throughout the situation the whale was relatively calm and was near the surface, which meant it could breathe easily. It appears the animal was a juvenile, and we often find it is these younger whales that can get caught up. This is mainly due to their inexperience in identifying obstructions in the water such as shark nets."  

Non target species
A Fisheries Queensland spokesperson said "Over the past three years, only one whale each year was caught in shark control equipment and they were all successfully freed."

"The Queensland Government is committed to the Shark Control Program because human safety must come first, but we do strive to get the balance right through the use of a number of measures to reduce entanglements of non-target species."

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/humpback-shark-nets.html

Total of 79 Potentially New Shark Species Found - via Lindsay Selby

From Nature magazine

A genetic study of thousands of specimens of sharks and rays has uncovered scores of potential new species and is fuelling biologists’ debates over the organisation of the family tree of these animals. The work also raises the possibility that some species are even more endangered than previously thought.

Sharks and rays are key predators in marine ecosystems, but the life cycles and population numbers of many species remain poorly understood. The family tree of these animals — which are part of the elasmobranch subclass — has proved similarly opaque, with little agreement among researchers over their evolutionary relationships.

Gavin Naylor, a biologist at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, and his colleagues sequenced samples from 4,283 specimens of sharks and rays as part of a major effort to fill the gaps. The team found 574 species, of which 79 are potentially new, they report in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.

Naylor says that he was “flabbergasted” by the result, especially because the sequencing covered only around half of the roughly 1,200 species thought to exist worldwide.

The huge number of new species found raises immediate conservation concerns — the reason that some of these purported new species have gone undetected is probably their close resemblance to already-identified species. The populations of such species may, therefore, be even smaller than estimated, as what was thought to be one population may instead be several smaller populations of separate species.

Continued:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=total-79-potentially-new-shark-species-found

European Union failing threatened mediterranean sharks

Oceana, the international marine conservation organisation, denounces the European Commission for blocking efforts to protect threatened and endangered sharks and rays in the Mediterranean Sea, under the Barcelona Convention. The protection of ten species of sharks and rays is one of the key issues for discussion at the biennial meeting of the Convention, which begins today in Paris. Non-EU nations within the Convention have already expressed their support for protecting these species.

The potential inclusion of these fish on a list of strictly protected species hinges on the EU’s vote. Yet, despite having had months to do so, the European Commission has not yet adopted a common position on the issue with European Member States. Meanwhile, in 2009, EU Member States together accounted for the highest level of reported shark catches globally (16%), which were caught in European, high seas, and third-country waters.

“After delaying this decision twice already, because they wanted more time for ‘internal discussions’, it is inexcusable that the European Commission could not manage to resolve its bureaucratic issues in time for this critical meeting,” said Ricardo Aguilar, Research Director for Oceana in Europe. “The Commission says “we need to protect sharks” but when it comes to the Mediterranean, their actions indicate the opposite, even going so far as to warn against protecting threatened species at a recent meeting on Mediterranean sharks[i].”

The Mediterranean is the region of greatest risk globally to sharks and rays, with 41% of species considered threatened, compared to 17% globally. Of the ten species under consideration at this week’s meeting, some have undergone severe population declines, including porbeagles, shortfin makos, and hammerheads, whose Mediterranean populations have been reduced by up to 99.9% during the 20^th Century. Others, such as the sandy skate, Maltese skate, and common guitarfish, have vanished from some areas where they were once common. All of the species are threatened by overfishing, despite already being included on a list of species whose capture must be regulated for conservation reasons.

“It is incomprehensible that the European Commission has taken so long to resolve its position on such a clear-cut issue: highly threatened sharks and rays are being fished, and urgently require greater protection,” added Dr. Allison Perry, marine wildlife scientist with Oceana in Europe. “The EU has a responsibility – under both European law and as a signatory to the Barcelona Convention – to take precautionary measures to ensure their conservation. There is still a window of opportunity in Paris, and we trust that EU Member States and the Commission will coordinate a swift decision to grant these species the protection they deserve.”

The 17th Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention gathers policymakers from 21 Mediterranean nations and the European Union, to discuss the environmental health of the Mediterranean Sea and to decide matters related to its protection. In addition to shark and ray conservation, important issues to be discussed this week include the protection of marine areas in the open sea, and pollution resulting from offshore drilling.

Fact sheet: Barcelona Convention. The necessity of Annex II protection for threatened sharks & rays

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[i] General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, 12-16 December 2011: “The DG-MARE representative warned that RAC/SPA should not take IUCN advice automatically because too many species of great commercial value would be included in Appendix II.” (page 12; full report here)

http://oceana.org/en/eu/media-reports/press-releases/european-union-failing-threatened-mediterranean-sharks

Many sharks 'facing extinction'

Endangered hammerhead sharks are often caught for their valuable fins



Many species of open ocean shark are under serious threat, according to an assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).


The Red list gives the status of 64 types of shark and ray, over 30% of which are threatened with extinction.

The authors, IUCN's Shark Specialist Group, say a main cause is overfishing.

Listed as endangered are two species of hammerhead shark, often subject to "finning" - a practice of removing the fins and throwing away the body.

This is the first time that IUCN Red List criteria, considered the world's most comprehensive inventory of the conservation status of plants and animals, have been used to classify open ocean, or pelagic, sharks and rays.

The list is part of an ongoing international scientific project to monitor the animals.

The authors classified a further 24% of the examined species as Near Threatened.

Sharks are "profoundly vulnerable" to overfishing, they say. This is principally because many species take several years to mature and have relatively few young.

"[But] despite mounting threats, sharks remain virtually unprotected on the high seas," said Sonja Fordham, deputy chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group and one of the editors of the report.

"[We have] documented serious overfishing of these species, in national and international waters. This demonstrates a clear need for immediate action on a global scale."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognised the potential threat to sharks over a decade ago, when it launched its "International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks" in 1999.

But the "requested improvements fisheries data from member states... have been painfully slow and simply inadequate", according to this report by the IUCN.

"There have been improvements here and there but overall progress hasn't been as swift as we might like to see," said Jorge Csirke, director of the FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture Management Division.

"Very often the reason is not a lack of will - although that can be a problem - but a lack of know-how and, most critically, a lack of budgetary resources for improving fisheries data collection.

Many pelagic sharks are caught in high seas tuna and swordfish fisheries.

Although some are accidentally caught in nets meant for these other fish, they are increasingly targeted for their meat, teeth and liver oil, and because of high demand, particularly in Asia, for their fins.

Discarded bodies
"The hammerheads are special because they have very high quality fins but quite low quality meat," explained Ms Fordham. "They often fall victim to finning."

She told BBC News that, although finning is widely banned, this ban is not always well enforced.

"The EU finning ban is one of the weakest in the world," she said.

"The best, most sure-fire way to enforce a ban is to prohibit the removal of fins at sea.

"But in the EU, you can remove them, providing the fins you bring ashore weigh less than 5% of the weight of the bodies."

This rule was designed to prevent finning, but it provided "wiggle room", said Ms Fordham.
"The IUCN has estimated that, under these rules, you could fin and discard two to three sharks for every shark you keep, " she explained.

The European Commission agreed that EU policy on finning "contained a number of loopholes".

"That's why in February we proposed to strengthen the finning ban and close these loopholes," the commission said in a statement.

'No fishing'
Species listed as Vulnerable included the smooth hammerhead shark, the porbeagle shark and the common, bigeye and pelagic thresher sharks.

Fisheries have fought to keep their right to fish porbeagle sharks because their meat is so valuable, according to Ms Fordham.

"Yet we've already had recommendations from scientists that there should be no fishing of these sharks."

For certain species - that are considered particularly vulnerable - the authors have recommended their complete protection.

"The big-eyed thresher shark, for example, is very slow growing," explained Ms Fordham.
"Fishermen can very easily identify it, because it has a very big eye. So if they catch it accidentally, they can throw it back.

"These sharks tend to survive well when they're thrown back."

By the end of this year, the Shark Specialist Group will publish a complete report, outlining the status of all 400 species of shark, and closely-related skates and rays.

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8117378.stm