Vancouver’s Responsibility to Protect Sharks From Industrial Fishing
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Image by US Fish and Wildlife Service - Pacific Regions
Demand for shark fin soup and other seafood poses a serious threat for sharks
In recent years, sharks have been garnering worldwide media attention. Locally, the Vancouver Sun dedicated their front cover in a five-part series to these often-misunderstood creatures, and local groups The Wake Project Society and SharkTurth have made headlines with campaigns to show sharks more love.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that people in Vancouver have taken an interest in sharks; an estimated 10,000 sharks of 28 different species swam through our waters in 2010. If you’re diving off the coast of Vancouver Island you may have been lucky enough to see one.
Because of the success of documentaries like Sharkwater, many people are now aware that up to 100 million sharks are killed every year to feed a growing demand for shark fin soup. Canada alone imported 311,600 kilograms of shark product in 2009. The tasteless delicacy is believed to have healing powers, despite scientists’ findings that shark flesh (like that of many larger predatory fish we consume) is toxic.
However we can’t begin to save sharks without considering the bigger picture of how most of our seafood comes to our grocery stores and restaurants through industrial-sized fishing operations. Indiscriminate fishing technologies like bottom trawling and long-line fishing mean that even when fishermen aren’t looking for sharks, they’re catching them along with thousands of other creatures at the same time.
100 million sharks are killed each year to fill the demand for shark fin soup. (Image: Flickr / lookslikeamy)
Bottom trawling: Bulldozing the ocean floor
Bottom trawling is a practice that involves scraping an immense weighted net along the sea floor, bulldozing everything in its path . Bottom trawling results in large quantities of unwanted marine life being caught and killed alongside the targeted species. For example, party favourite shrimp rings that are bought frozen most likely came from industrial-sized bottom trawling operations.
Shrimp fishing results in high amounts of bycatch, even by industry standards. “Bycatch” is the term used to refer to the capture of untargeted species, and sharks are often killed in “untargeted” ways.
Recent studies have shown that bycatch can make up to 60 percent of a haul from bottom trawling. Much of this bycatch is thrown back overboard as waste, despite being edible. Such practices, in combination with the sheer rate at which we are consuming what comes from the sea, is why some top fisheries scientists are now predicting we will run out of commercially consumed seafood by 2050.
Other popular fishing methods such as long lining, fish aggregating or even cyanide fishing don’t fair much better in terms of ecological impact. In addition to modern technology, the worldwide fishing fleet is two and a half times bigger than the ocean can support. This amounts to more than 170 billion pounds of wild fish and shellfish being caught every year. Barely 1 percent of the world’s oceans are protected, which is why bycatch and over-fishing has become a worldwide concern.
Commercial fishing plays a big role in BC's economy. (Image: Flickr / Klearchos Kapoutsis)
Fish Stocks: The connection between BC's economy and marine life
British Columbia’s economy would be particularly hurt by a collapse of worldwide fish stocks. Statistics show that the fisheries and aquaculture industry contributed $1.9 billion to BC’s economy in 2007 and provided 155,000 jobs.
A 2009 report by the Living Oceans Society discovered that bottom-trawling vessels in the Pacific Ocean discarded nearly 220,459,000 pounds (100,000 metric tonnes) of bycatch from 1996 to 2006. The report calculated that this accounted for 20 percent of all biomass caught by bottom trawling vessels during that time. The discarded bycatch included commercially consumed species as well as species without commercial value.
As of 2009, Canada had 70 fisheries licensed to bottom trawl in our Pacific waters, and while the provincial government has taken the initiative to create a “Sustainable Groundfish Resources” management program, the program does not consider bycatch of non-commercial species. Sharks are not the primary catch of trawling, but it is nonetheless destructive to BC waters ecosystems.
Sharks are most often caught as bycatch in tuna fishing operations. Tuna and sharks often share the same living space, and while sharks are caught “incidentally” by tuna fleets, they are very often still finned. Sharks can make up to half of the overall catch in some tuna fisheries.
All of this means that if the majority of Vancouverites aren’t consuming shark fin soup, our appetite for seafood and tuna specifically, is still causing problems for our 400-million-year-old friends. Sharks, especially oceangoing species, regularly fall victim to incidental catch by equipment intended for other marine life. They may or may not get their fins cut off, and certainly they are not canned and served up along with the tuna, but either way the experience is fatal.
This makes their deaths invisible from a management point of view, meaning it isn’t counted or included in statistics. This is why scientists can only estimate how many sharks are killed every year.
Many of us have realized that our oceans are in trouble and have promised never to eat shark fin soup and maybe even promised to put an effort into purchasing seafood from sustainable sources. This is most definitely an improvement on the average, however the reality is that besides some rare cases (like BC’s recent increase in sockeye salmon populations) our appetite for seafood is so great that the majority of ocean life is being dragged out of the waters much faster then it can be replenished.
Sea bass and tuna. (Image: Flickr / Eggybird)
Making Vancouver a shark friendly city
So although Vancouver has started to show some much deserved love for sharks and the ocean in general, the fate of our seas remains in what we humans decide to put on our plates. So even if shark fin is out of the question, consider what else can be done to help our predatory friends stay out of hot water:
1. Many innovative restaurants in Vancouver are now offering creative alternatives to fish-based meals, and there is even vegan shark fin soup.
2. Local sustainable seafood is still a great way to go. For example, Vancouver’s local Spot Prawn fishery supplies this city with succulent prawns that are a much tastier alternative to those nearly tasteless shrimp rings. BC Spot Prawns are local and sustainably caught in small cages that catch only prawns. Tuna fisherman make their way to Vancouver’s farmers markets weekly and only fish with about a dozen hooks at a time (compared to the thousands of hooks used by the average long-lining operation) and generally have no bycatch. Their tuna is available canned, fresh or frozen.
3. Even if you aren’t ready for a vegan diet yet, you can still make a difference by eating with less environmental impact. SeaChoice offers a free downloadable guide (also available as an App) that lists the best and worst seafood to purchase. And locally, the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise program empowers us to make sensible seafood choices through its website and partnerships with local restaurants.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, since Canada as a whole exports much more seafood than we consume, we need to demand effective changes to ocean policies, fisheries management and food labelling laws.
With Vancouver aiming to be the Greenest City in the World by 2020, I’m thinking we have the potential to be the most “shark friendly” as well.
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