Global Trends in Shark Catches and the State of the Resource

Sharks and their relatives, the batoids comprise the elasmobranch fishes, a group of more than 1,100 species, of which more than 400 are sharks. Most elasmobranchs have slow rates of growth, late age-at-maturity, and low fecundity compared to bony fishes. The history of most directed shark and ray fisheries around the world has been one of over-harvest, rapid stock decline, and collapse, and limited recovery. Sharks and rays are harvested primarily for their meat, fins, skin, cartilage, and liver. Shark fins are the most valuable of shark products, and are used to make traditional shark fin soup, a delicacy in the Chinese culture. Nominal global catches from 1990-2008 reached a peak of ca. 900,000 t in 2003, then declined to ca. 700,000t in 2008.. The most important FAO regions were the Western Central Pacific, Eastern and Western Indian Ocean, and the Northeast Atlantic. The top five countries were Indonesia, India, Taiwan, Spain and Mexico. The global values of shark landings  rose from ca. 400 million USD in 1990 to over a billion USD in 2000, declining to ca. 800 million USD in 2006 . The value of shark landings in Asia far surpassed that of all other areas together. Nominal catch data depend on reports from individual countries and the catch from the fin trade alone is four times that reported. Because of the low economic value of sharks and rays, little resources have been put into collection of fisheries landings data. The global status of sharks and ray populations is not good despite the rather modest recent decline seen in the catch statistics. Most shark and ray populations are being fished without any management. For many elasmobranch species the question no longer is about fishery sustainability, but rather extinction risk. Of more than 1000 elasmobranch species recently assessed by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, ca.  half had insufficient data. Of the remainder ca. 37% were deemed to be threatened because of excessive fishery mortality.