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Sharks are under threat, groups say

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 13, 2006

BEIJING - Many species of shark are facing a serious threat to their existence because of worldwide fishing trends, environmentalists said last week.

Fishermen "used to cut the lines and let sharks go," said Pete Knights, executive director of WildAid, a San Francisco conservation group, said at a shark conservation conference Wednesday. In recent years, however, fishermen have kept the sharks to sell their lucrative fins.

One-third of the more than 500 shark species are threatened with extinction or are close to being threatened, said Sarah Fowler of the World Conservation Union.

She and other experts at the conference said governments and nongovernmental organizations must work together to educate the public and fishermen about overfishing.

WildAid, which co-sponsored the conference, persuaded NBA star Yao Ming in August to pledge to give up eating shark's fin soup, a Chinese delicacy, as part of a campaign to promote wildlife protection in his homeland.

WildAid says China is the world's biggest importer of shark's fins, which conservationists say are cut from sharks that are thrown back into the ocean to die. Wild-Aid put the worldwide trade in shark's fins at 10,000 tons a year.

Knights said that as the Chinese economy has grown, shark fin consumption has risen, exacerbating pressures on shark populations that were already vulnerable to overfishing because they breed so slowly.

[Last modified November 13, 2006, 01:22:36]