Australian Shark Shame.
WWWF-Australia have just published figures that more than 500tonnes of shark product was exported over the last 13months, including 230tonnes of shark fins. This represents the slaughter of over 10,000 sharks by the most conservative estimates and does not include the number of sharks caught for the domestic market.
Australia forbids the practice of ‘shark fining’ where fins are cut off the shark and the rest is thrown back into the sea. However this does not stop the Aussie shark fin trade, provided that the shark body (gutted and beheaded) is brought back to port before it is finned and the whole animal is used in some way.
The fins will fetch up to $110 per kilo, with the rest of the shark only worth a maximum of $3 per kilo, so the Australian Ocean Trap and Line Fishery has seen a big increase of the fishing effort targeting large shark species in New South Wales, where daily boat limits of 1tonne of shark allows for a huge harvest of around 30/40 sharks per trip. Worse the NSW Department of Primary Industries, the number of fish being recorded as ‘Sharks’-unspecified accounts for about 50% of the catch.
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