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It isn't as though the fins are being fed to starving children. They're used in Asia for shark-fin soup, a delicacy that fetches up to $150 a bowl. The market for shark fins is incredibly profitable; U.S. fishermen earn as much as $25 per lb. for fins, compared with 50[cents] per lb. for shark meat. The trade has grown dramatically since commerce with China began expanding in the 1980s: some 125 nations are now involved.
Though far less profitable, shark meat has also enjoyed a sales boom since the early 1980s. Tuna and swordfish stocks began to dwindle at that time, and the U.S. government encouraged fishermen to pursue other targets. That may have been a big mistake. Traditional food fish, like cod and tuna, grow quickly and lay millions of eggs at a time. Sharks, by contrast, can take two decades to reach sexual maturity, have a long gestation period and bear only a few young at one time. Killing a relatively small number of females can dramatically limit the reproductive potential of an entire species.
To date, only four countries--the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Canada--have implemented any sort of shark-management plan, and only a handful have enacted laws protecting especially vulnerable species. Probably the most comprehensive undertaking is the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service's Atlantic shark-fishery management plan, which since 1993 has limited the catch of 39 species in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The plan sets annual quotas, bans finning and mandates species-specific tracking programs to help scientists. "It's having an impact," says NMFS's Rebecca Lent. "The 1996 assessments show that the large coastal sharks are still being overfished, but the rate has slowed down."
To slow it down further, NMFS announced last spring that it was cutting this year's quota for large coastal sharks by 50%, to 1,285 metric tons, as well as establishing the first quota ever for small coastal sharks and banning commercial harvests of five species considered especially prone to overfishing--whale, basking, white, sand tiger and bigeye sand tiger. Outraged fishermen have responded by suing the Secretary of Commerce. Conservation is important, agrees Robert Spaeth, head of the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, but he argues that shark populations are difficult to count accurately--an assertion biologists agree with--and that the government's statistics are therefore suspect.
NMFS stands by its numbers, however, and is considering even tougher restrictions, such as limiting the number of shark-fishing permits and setting minimum size requirements for each species. Another option, which requires cooperation from individual states but is enthusiastically supported by environmental groups, is to close critical inshore pupping and nursery grounds.
In the Pacific, conservationists' most immediate concern is finning. Every year at least 50,000 blue sharks landed by longline fishermen off Hawaii are stripped of their valuable fins and tossed back in the water. While the regional fisheries councils responsible for U.S. Pacific waters haven't yet addressed this problem, California has: the state legislature in 1993 passed a bill protecting white sharks from being caught or killed by commercial fishermen, along with more limited restrictions on other species and rules against killing sharks for their fins alone.