A group of baby sharks were sold in Sandakan Fish Market. -Photo: Brittany Chang
KOTA KINABALU: Addressing "accidental" shark and ray catches by fishermen should be a priority in the conservation management, says Marine Research Foundation executive director Dr Nicolas Pilcher.
"Given that sharks and rays play a crucial role in our ecosystems and economies, addressing accidental catch should be prioritised in a way that continues to ensure the livelihoods of fishermen are maintained, but also that these endangered species are protected," said Pilcher.
Sharks and rays, he said, were valuable resources that were depleting, rather than increasing due to unselective fishing.
"Sustainable fisheries management practices such as time-area closures (closing a space for a short period) and gear restrictions (limiting the types of gear used in important shark areas) are two such measures that could reduce accidental catch of sharks and rays," he said on Friday (April 7).
Friends of Sea Turtles Education & Research (Foster) president Alexander Yee said it was clear that addressing accidental catch can only be part of the solution.
"We need government agencies and NGOs to continue encouraging consumers to avoid eating shark fins - as the well-known saying goes, when the buying stops, the killing stops.
"Secondly, we need better ways to monitor for, and improve enforcement of international exports of sharks and rays - where high value fins are often in greater demand.
"And this is not as simple as it might sound. There are entrenched businesses that have depended on this trade for decades, and so management measures must be mindful of how this is phased out," he said.
Yee said while there are obvious advantages to protecting our sharks, one of the challenges is to find a balance between communities who have sharks as their diet and us conservationists and tourism operators."
To avoid drastic declines of sharks and rays in Sabah, "reasoned and balanced" conservation measures were needed, and conservationists want the Sabah government to step up measures to "protect these incredible ocean ambassadors."
Even though Sabah does not have specific target fisheries for sharks, 713 tonnes of sharks and 1,991 tonnes of rays were landed mostly due to accidental fishing in 2021.
More than 138,000 individual sharks and rays were estimated to be caught by trawl vessels in just Sabah in a single year, according to the Marine Research Foundation.
This estimate does not include landings from other fishing gears such as the ubiquitous gillnets used by traditional fishers, longlines, and purse seine vessels.
"Over time, this accidental catch of sharks and rays can lead to reduction in population sizes of vulnerable species and may contribute to local extinctions. Imagine a Sabah with no sharks," the MRF conservationist said.
Sabah Dive Tourism ambassador Clement Lee said that these sharks and rays have tremendous value to tourism, particularly the diving industry.
"Dive tourism receipts ranged from RM450mil to RM800mil annually in the last few years in Sabah and sharks are a main contributor to this. You take sharks out of the water, you take a big chunk out of dive tourism receipts," Lee said.
In 2018, during the Sabah Sharks and Ray Forum 2018 in Kota Kinabalu, Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) Dr Johanna Zimmerhackel said that the Semporna diving industry was worth USD72mil (RM316mil) a year.
Of this, US$22mil (RM100mil) was based on shark diving. Some 29% of all tourists visit Semporna annually and 41% of them ranked sharks as their principal attraction, followed by sea turtles and fishes.
MRF noted that from a socio-economic perspective, some local communities depend on sharks and rays as part of their diets, turned into salted fish or consumed in barbeque dishes such as 'Ikan Pari Bakar'.
But not all sharks and rays are of high value, and many low value specimens continue to be sold in markets.
"For example, small sized shark and ray species such as spot-tail shark and blue spotted stingray and whiprays are sold cheaper than other commercially valuable fishes.
"But while the sale of shark and ray meat is often opportunistic, the sale of their fins is a completely different story. Until now, shark fins continue to attract high prices, making them an irresistible draw to fishermen, who continue to capture, land and sell sharks with the sale of the fins being the most attractive target," MRF statement said.
Sabah does not permit old-style shark finning where fishermen chop off the fins and discard the rest.
The conservationist noted that the high value of the fins does mean that many threatened species such as the Blue shark, Silky Shark, Hammerhead shark and Rhino ray among others remain a valuable catch to fishermen as they sell the meat and other body parts.
MRF conservation officer Ho Kooi Chee, who has pioneered a lot of the research on sharks and rays in the state, summed this dilemma up perfectly: "What is more valuable? The occasional plate of ikan pari sambal, the selfless pocketing of one-time shark fin cash revenues by a select few, or the incredible economic power of live sharks, driving multi-million-ringgit revenues in tourism?"
