Monday, November 29, 2010

Hammerheads, other sharks protected at fisheries meet

Terra Daily via AFP: Half-a-dozen species of endangered sharks hunted on the high seas to satisfy a burgeoning Asian market for sharkfin soup are now protected in the Atlantic, a fisheries group decided Saturday.

Scalloped, smooth and great hammerheads, along with oceanic white tip, cannot be targeted or kept if caught accidentally, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) said.

Three other types of hammerhead are included in the ban: smalleye, scoophead, and whitefin. However, a proposal submitted by the European Union to extend the same level of protection to the porbeagle shark, critically endangered in the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean, was shot down….

Great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) at the Adventure Aquarium, Camden, NJ, USA, shot by Jim Capaldi, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

No comments: