Scalloped and smooth hammerheads for the fin trade landed in Equador ©M. Shivji

In 2006, Dr. Shelley Clarke of Imperial College, UK, in collaboration with the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida conducted the first quantitative assessment of the number of sharks being killed by surveying fin markets.  As part of this pioneering study, they estimated that 1.5 to 4 million hammerhead sharks are killed per year by commercial fishers just to satisfy the demands of the international fin trade!  And these staggering figures are conservative because they only account for the three large hammerhead species (great, scalloped and smooth hammerheads) of the nine known species, and don’t include the many hammerheads killed that don’t end up in the fin markets.  The actual number of hammerhead sharks killed worldwide is undoubtedly larger.

What accounts for this large-scale slaughter of one of the ocean’s most charismatic and evolutionarily distinctive creatures?  It’s ironic that although hammerhead shark meat is considered of very low food quality in most commercial markets, their fins fetch amongst the highest prices in the world fin trade.  Depending on the species, average wholesale prices for hammerhead shark fins range from U.S. $88-135 per kilogram of unprocessed fins – that’s 2-4 times more than the price of fresh tuna fillets in most U.S. grocery stores!

As you might imagine, this high market value for hammerhead shark fins has created enormous economic incentives to exploit them.  The three large hammerhead species are distributed in tropical to temperate waters worldwide, and the absence of fisheries management by most nations, has resulted in their severe overfishing globally.  The data shows that even in U.S waters where some management is practiced, hammerhead populations have declined over 80%!  It makes the population status and future outlook for hammerheads in most parts of their range pretty dire.

Discarded carcass of finned scalloped hammerhead ©Jeff Rotman/jeffrotman.com

These overfishing concerns resulted in the U.S. and Palau co-sponsoring a proposal to the March 2010 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to list all three large hammerheads on Appendix II of the international treaty.  This listing would have triggered strong restrictions to international trade in fins from these species, reducing the economic incentives to continue unabated, ecologically damaging overfishing.  Unfortunately, Japan and its allied countries were strongly opposed to such a listing and launched a major effort to defeat the proposal.  In the final analysis even though the majority of nations voted in support of the listing, the measure failed because it did not receive the two-thirds vote required for adoption (final vote was 75 in support, 45 against and 14 abstentions).

With the failure of the listing proposal to be adopted by CITES, unregulated fishing and trade in fins will continue with the real risk that hammerhead populations in many parts of their range will be extirpated or at the very least reduced to the point of ecological extinction.  This will not only add another significant disruption to the proper working of our ocean ecosystems, but is also ethically deplorable.

So what’s to be done now to try and conserve hammerhead sharks?  The Guy Harvey Research Institute scientists and their collaborators from the Save Our Seas Foundation are working quickly to collect scientific data on the population status of hammerhead sharks worldwide, and develop rapid DNA forensics tools that can be used to track the origin of fins in the market to their geographic origins.  This information is essential to bolster the case (get more supporting votes) for international trade restrictions at the next CITES meeting, and for supporting implementation of protective fishery regulations for hammerhead sharks by individual countries.

Thank you for your continued support of the conservation research and policy initiatives that are being worked on to prevent these amazing and unique sharks from being commercially overfished into oblivion.

For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit: www.guyharveysportswear.com

Related posts:

1. Neurotoxins in shark fins: A human health concern
2. Two Uncommon Species – The Blacktip Shark and Oceanic Whitetip Shark
3. CSI in Real-World, Shark Conservation and Management — Better than TV!
4. Undercover Investigation Exposes Secrets of the Overseas Shark Fin Market
5. The Misunderstood Tiger Shark Shows Remarkable Migratory Behavior

Tags: Dr Mahmood Shivji, Shark

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 9:58 am and is filed under Fishing, Our Oceans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.