Its cinematographic fame, the spectacular nature of some of its few attacks and its condition as a great predator make it difficult to assimilate it, but sharks and rays (they are the same family) are in serious danger of extinction. Researcher Sarah Fowler, author of Sharks in the World, put the figures. “More than 37% of the species are threatened and there are some that have not been seen for many years and may have become extinct,” he summarizes.
The image of sharks, however, makes it difficult to raise awareness of this situation. “They are not seen by the public like dolphins. They have very bad press. It is difficult to pass the barrier of teeth or attacks. When someone looks for information on cows on the internet, there is no entry on how many people die from a kick, even though it is a lot, and with sharks, yes, even though the deaths are very few”, explains Pablo García-Salinas, a researcher at the Fundación Oceanografic.
In this Valencian center and with this complicated panorama, this Wednesday the fourth edition of the congress has started Sharks International. It has done so with workshops on how they work with sharks. Extraction of blood, semen, marking… Research is one of the approaches that will be addressed in this meeting between more than 400 specialists, but not the only one. “We need to communicate what we are doing and exert political pressure so that all of this ends up reaching the people who take legal action,” says García-Salinas.
There is already a pressure group, a lobby, which tries to influence the decisions of the countries and supranational organizations that decide on relevant aspects for their conservation. “We work for effective fisheries management based on science to maintain the health of ecosystems and populations,” explains Alex Bartolí, a member of Submon, one of the organizers of the congress. “We have to understand that what is really scary is a sea without sharks, since as large predators they help maintain the ecological balance of our seas,” he recalls. Her sisters are also the rays that, stirring up the seabed, are essential to create habitats for many species.
In the threat that hangs over these animals there is a main cause, says García-Salinas: “Overfishing”. Because, as happens with the pig, sharks take advantage of almost everything. “The meat is marketed as mussola, dogfish, mako shark or blue shark. It is also used to make fish meal, pet food. Collagen supplements for athletes are made with their cartilage; liver oil is used by the pharmaceutical industry; the skin becomes a high-quality leather and even the teeth go into jewelry”, he explains.
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This researcher assures that “Spain is at the forefront in catches and is the largest exporter in the EU” destined for Italy or Asian countries, which is why he gives special importance to hosting this event. In Spain fishing is regulated, of the species that are allowed, through a system of quotas in the Atlantic zone and effort, that is, days or hours of work in the Mediterranean. But there are areas where control is much less. “The Pacific or the Indian, above all,” says Bartolí.
In the same way, there are areas where their meat is essential for food and this increases the pressure on species that take a long time to reproduce. “Every minute 180 sharks are captured in the world and the most conservative data speak of about 100 million specimens a year,” explains García-Salinas. These are figures that can hardly be sustained with their reproduction cycle in many cases. “The Greenland shark lives up to 500 years and its reproduction starts after 150. There are other less extreme cases that do not start until they are 15 years old,” she points out.
The investigator, however, asks not to target the fishermen… but to ally with them. “For a long time science has seen the fisherman as an enemy, as a destructive element, and the path begins by changing that and understanding that they are people who earn their living this way, that they have a very hard job and that the last thing they want is to see to the sea in bad conditions. That is why we work more and more side by side with them”, he assures.
Other threats
Climate change has now joined overfishing and the well-known coastal pressure, which in 10 years can change habitats and put the viability of a species at risk. “Twenty years ago, only one species was classified as at risk for this issue, but now more than 100 are. [sobre un total de 360 registradas]”, assures Fowler. “Sharks morphologically do not have to be affected, for example, if the temperature of the water increases by one degree, but it does affect them if that causes a large change in the habitat or if their prey leaves,” García-Salinas reflects.
Canary angelsharks, a project to save the species
For nine years the Canary Islands have been hosting a project with angel sharks or angelsharks, as they are known for their large size. It is the second most threatened family of sharks, which has a sanctuary in these waters in which work is being done to guarantee its conservation and to deepen research into its habits and habitats to recover the species in other areas of the world where the situation It’s much worse. The ‘Angel Shark’ project is promoted by the University of Gran Canaria, the Zoological Society of London and the German Alexander Koeniig Zoological Research Museum and its research has led the Government to include angel sharks in 2019 on the list of protected species.
Among its line of work is the edition of guides so that professional and recreational fishermen can return them to the water safely if they are caught by mistake and so that divers have “exemplary behavior” with them, explains David Jiménez, one of their managers. . The investigations are nourished by the visual marking of many of his collaborators, but the acoustic marking network that they have created on the coast of La Graciosa stands out. “Every time a tagged specimen passes by, it sends us a signal and that gives us a lot of information, but it is expensive, each receiver costs about two thousand euros and each tag about 300 ″, he points out. “The angelshark is doing well in the Canary Islands, the problem is that there is very little left in the rest of the world, especially in the Mediterranean, and the knowledge we acquire here allows us to send information to other places so that they can immediately implement protection measures” , point.
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