Once feared predator, now endangered

Once feared predator, now endangered

On the streets of Hong Kong, skinned and dried shark fins are lined up on endless shop shelves. They are still discernibly fin-shaped; that alarming triangle made famous by Steven Spielberg's 1975 horror film Jaws.

For the past three decades and more, that image of a shark's fin quickly homing in on its prey has been embedded into the collective psyche. It is something swimmers around the world avoid at all costs.

But the threat that sharks may have once posed to the oceans' fish shoals, seal populations and the odd errant human surfer is long gone.

Fins that once belonged to the sea's supreme predator now lie rigid, dry and cream-coloured, destined for the cooking pot.

Shark fin soup

Today, a bowl of shark fin soup can cost $100, with a single fin being worth more than $1,300.

Once a rarity only available to the Chinese upper class, shark fin soup is now commonly available as a result of improved fishing techniques and the increased demand of a larger and wealthier middle class

Indeed, up to 10mn kgs of shark fins (equivalent to the weight of more than 2,000 adult African elephants) are exported annually to Hong Kong by nearly 87 countries.

 
And a major world hub for the shark fin trade is the United Arab Emirates, which supplies nearly 10 per cent of the world's total supplies.

At the Dubai Fish Market one need not look far to see the size of the problem facing the dwindling number of sharks.

Black tip sharks, carpet sharks, lemon sharks and hammermeads, mainly fished in the deep waters between Oman and Iran, are to be found here.

Porters steer barrowloads (yes, barrowloads) of  juvenile sharks through the stalls. 

Indiscriminate destruction

Jonathan Ali Khan has been filming and researching sharks for years, and is producing a documentary film on this very issue.

He gestured towards a stall piled with a variety of shark species.

"We’ve got pretty much three or four generations of sharks there - from pups all the way through to the adults,"  Khan said. "It’s easy to see how life on the reef can be destroyed. It’s indiscriminate."

But Al Jazeera had not seen anything yet. Behind a line of trucks we filmed the huge dorsal fin of a whale shark, already listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES)  in which trade is restricted, but for which clearly there is a market.

This specimen will not end up in soup bowls - something of this size is decorative, it will end up in a glass case on a wall, value $25,000.

"I had thought the United Arab Emirates were on board with monitoring this kind of thing," Khan said. "But it goes to show how hard it is to implement restrictions of certain species."

Big catch

And then - the hustle and bustle of the late afternoon delivery and the really big catch arrives at the Dubai Fish Market.

Workers haul in scores of adult sharks of all kinds; some are pregnant mothers and there is even a big Tiger Shark - squat, solid and still pretty scary with his deathly bloody grin as it rests on its side.

Most will be de-finned, and then the bodies will be thrown away; there is a separate area where maybe 30 or so shark tails are displayed. 

And this is just one random day in Dubai Fish Market. They say there are still greater quantities of sharks coming into Sharjah Market, in the adjoining emirate.

Agents from Hong Kong haggle with the traders over the price of the day. And the value is going up because there are fewer sharks around. 

We interviewed a retired agent who did not want to be named; he said the numbers on display did not compare to past hauls. Here's our exchange:

Al Jazeera: "So before there were hundreds and hundreds of sharks each day?"

Retired agent: "Thousands! Thousands of sharks in the olden days."

Al Jazeera: "Now all gone?"

Retired agent: "Gone, gone, gone. We are destroying the fishery."

'Stop the trade'

As a dark blue dusk descends, the seagulls wheel in the street lights eyeing the bountiful scraps lying around the barrows and gutters.

An auction starts over a mound of dried shark fin destined for diners in China. 

This week at the CITES convention in Doha, delegates will be voting on whether to restrict fishing and trading in four endangered shark species.

But even if such a resolution is passed, it will be hard to police.

How would officials be able to pick out the fin of a Porbeagle or a Scalloped Hammerhead from the small mountain of dried, unrecognisable specimens?

Khan suggests that a more radical move is required.

"They should simply ban the trade in shark fin, full stop. Don’t worry about specific species, just stop the trade," he says.

"That way, local communities can still fish for sharks and trade shark meat but not the fins. That’s the only way."