Sarah Fowler, marine zoologist, author of the book Guía de campo de los tiburones del mundo, has been dedicated to the conservation of these species for 30 years. She was one of the first people to warn during the 1990s of the increase in finning (tearing off the precious shark fins and throwing the body into the sea), a practice in the service of Asian cuisine that it was banned in Europe. “37% of shark and ray species are in critical danger”, he explains after speaking at the International Shark Congress, which was held at the Oceanogràfic in Valencia. “The situation of these species is particularly worrying in coastal areas, in shallow areas of the ocean, where there are more threat factors”.
What are these threats?
Especially fishing. All species, more or less, are threatened by fishing, whether commercial or accidental. It is a tremendous overfishing.
Where are these threats most serious? Is there more risk of local extinction?
One of the areas with the greatest threat is the Mediterranean, because it is a closed sea and fishing has been going on for a long time; but now the threat is moving towards tropical areas.
Because?
Tropical areas have temperate waters, that’s where the greatest diversity of these species is, and that’s where we see the strongest pressure from small fishing fleets. There are two endangered species that we do not observe and that we believe are extinct in these areas. One of them is the
Carcharhinus obsolerus i l’altra is the Carcharhinus leiodon.
Are there any locally or globally extinct shark species?
We know of many local extinctions. A very clear example is the angelfish or scat (Squatina squatina), an ambush predator that is usually buried in the sediments of the seabed. It had a very wide distribution in the north-eastern Atlantic (Norway, the North Sea, Ireland, France and Spain) and one of the last places where it can be seen now is in the Canary Islands. It was exploited commercially, used for fish and chips, and has now been replaced by other species. Today it has disappeared and the majority of the population is in the Canary Islands.
When did the risk of extinction of these species begin?
We didn’t know. When I started working at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in the 1990s, we did the first investigations to find out the situation. But there was no awareness of the degree of threat. Back then nobody was interested in sharks. Now there is more interest than ever, there are foundations dedicated to sponsoring projects, more documentaries… Social concern has grown.
What three priority actions should be taken to protect sharks?
The first would undoubtedly be to have more sustainable fisheries: that fishermen have a model of life that can be sustained for many years and that at the same time we can maintain fish populations of all kinds at appropriate levels. Secondly, it is necessary to recover the populations that have disappeared in some parts. And there should be a political will to pass laws that protect them.
Any more?
We also need marine protected areas. For some of these species there is no sustainable fishing, because the biological characteristics do not agree with this concept, they do not allow it. (They breed little and are slow growing). If we capture them we must be clear that they will disappear.
