Disgusting: Great Barrier Reef Shark Fin Fishery Proposed

A shocking and repulsive shark finning story - as if there were any other kind - recently submerged from Queensland. Please pass this along to friends, relatives, and keyboard conservation warriors alike.

Shark Fin Fishery proposed for Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

An alarming new proposal by the Queensland Government will establish a dedicated shark fin fishery in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and other marine parks in Queensland.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society is astonished by this proposal, in which Queensland's fisheries department (DPI&F) plans to legitimise one of the most unsustainable forms of fishing on the planet - shark fin fishing. With over 90% of the world's sharks and other big fish gone from our oceans, this project is unsustainable, unethical and will be flatly rejected by the Australian public.

Not only is the Queensland Government proposing to hand out specific fishing licenses for shark fin fishing, which will entrench the practice for years, they are planning to legitimise shark finning in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and in the Marine Parks of Moreton Bay and the Great Sandy Straits with this new license proposal.

The proposal will create new licenses to fishers to catch unlimited sharks and also to catch sharks with nets over a kilometre long in our off-shore waters.

Shark finning at sea, where the fins are cut of the shark and the carcass is thrown overboard, is banned in Australia (thanks to our efforts). However, shark fin fishing, where sharks are targeted for their high value fins but their carcasses are kept and sold as low value waste products, continues.

AMCS has pressed DPI&F to phase out shark fishing and they have failed to do so. What does it say for the sustainability agenda of this agency when it fails not only to protect one of the state's most vulnerable group of species, but promotes their exploitation?

During 2000-2004 shark fishing in Queensland increased four-fold with a massive 1240 tonnes of shark being landed in 2004*. The main pressure on sharks in the Great Barrier Reef is fishing, and this pressure is increasing. More than 90% of the Great Barrier Reef commercial shark harvest is taken by the gillnet fishery with the remainder taken by the line and trawl fisheries. However recreational fishers catch and retain a significant number of sharks.

Sharks are extremely vulnerable to fishing impacts. This is because their biology is more like whales and dolphins than other fish. Sharks are slow growing, have extremely low reproductive rates (producing very few young) and are mostly long lived. This means that they are very slow to recover from impacts on their populations. Many shark fisheries around the world have collapsed.

Sharks are apex predators, helping to control populations of prey species. Consequently, reducing the number of sharks may have significant and unpredictable impacts on other parts of the ecosystem.

The Queensland Government must revoke this proposal and commit to a program with fishers to save sharks, not hunt them. We strongly encourage anyone who treasures Queensland's sharks to have their say on this matter.

AMCS Ocean Activists will receive an email about this issue. If you are not yet an Ocean Activist please join up via our website; www.marineconservation.org.au.

If you are not on the internet then please send your written objections to:

East Coast Inshore Fin Fish Fishery RIS Response
Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries
GPO Box 46 Brisbane QLD 4001
Fax: 07 3229 8146
Online: www.dpi.qld.gov.au/fishweb

Hat tip: Amphibious Warrior