Shark activists push for Bahamas sanctuary

SMH - 

Shark defenders hope to capitalise on a series of victories in their fight against the lucrative fin trade, releasing a report on Monday calling for sanctuaries to save the world's oldest predator.

As legislation inches forward in California to ban the import and purchase of fins used in gourmet Chinese soups - source of the global shark population crash - activists are pushing for a sanctuary in the Bahamas in a bid to halt drastic overfishing that leads to 73 million sharks being killed each year.

"We've begun removing them from the oceans at an unprecedented rate in their 400-million-year history," Global Shark Conservation at the Pew Environment Group (PEG) director Matt Rand said, as activists heading the conservation movement convened in Washington last week for a strategy meet.
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"Sharks predate dinosaurs by about 100 million years, and somehow survived the extinction that killed those creatures. But they're not surviving the situation they're in today. All for a bowl of soup."

Hunger for their fins has exploded with the growing practice of "finning" - hacking off fins from the live animals and throwing them back in the water to die - responsible for a 90 per cent decline for some species.

About 30 per cent of all shark species are immediately threatened or near threatened with extinction, according to the report.

The sharks' own biology make them especially vulnerable to overfishing as they are more akin to mammals like whales and dolphins, reaching sexual maturity in their teens, and then only have a few pups at a time.

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