Europese Commisie wil actieplan voor de bescherming van haaien (en)
The commission proposed an EU action plan for the conservation of sharks and related species on Thursday (5 February), as rising European catches threaten their survival, but campaign groups have described the proposals as more of a "political obligation" than a real commitment to protecting sharks.
"The latest information we have confirms that human beings are a far bigger threat to sharks than sharks ever were to us," said EU fisheries commissioner Joe Borg i speaking at a press conference in Brussels.
The plan includes a number of proposals to limit shark fishing where populations are under threat and improve information gathering to aid future policy decisions.
It covers sharks, skate and ray species and, if agreed to by the European Parliament and EU member states, would operate in all areas where the EU fleet currently fishes, including in waters beyond those belonging to the bloc.
Shark species are particularly vulnerable to overfishing due to their long gestation period. In the case of the spurdog - a species of dogfish shark - gestation is two years, the longest of any animal.
This means that populations may take decades to recover, if they recover at all – drawing comparisons with Canadian Atlantic cod fisheries, which have never recovered from overfishing despite a moratorium introduced in 1992.
The important role played by these top predators in the complex oceanic ecosystem is not fully understood by scientists, although their feeding off dead carcasses is thought to reduce disease significantly.
Part of the plan aims to tackle the controversial practice of finning, whereby the shark's fins are removed before the animal is thrown back overboard to die at sea.
The process, banned by the EU in 2003, stems from the high value placed on shark fins as a food, particularly in Asian markets.
The 2003 ban included a number of exemptions that Mr Borg admitted have proved hard to police.
One component of the new plan would require fishermen who catch sharks under the exemptions to bring the whole carcass back to shore before removing the fins to help with monitoring.
Likewise a proposal forcing fishermen to bring sharks caught by accident back to shore would also provide a greater incentive to cut down on this occurring.
Mr Borg said he hoped the European Parliament and Council of Ministers would approve the plan before the end of this year and said he did not feel the current economic crisis would slow down its implementation.
"With fisheries you are always facing one crisis or another," he said, indicating that the crisis caused by record fuel prices in 2008 was significantly worse for fishermen than the current financial crisis.
Reacting to the commission's shark plan however, a number of NGOs said the measures did not go far enough.
"The plan lacks a solid commitment to seek mandatory collection of data on shark catch - a critical element if the EU is to succeed in the conservation of these species," said Aaron McLoughlin, head of the European marine programme at World Wildlife Fund.
The WWF also said enough resources had to be made available to allow for proper implementation of the proposals and called on the European Parliament and Council of Ministers to refrain from watering down the conservation measures.
Oceana, which campaigns specifically on fisheries issues, went further still: "we got a vague document which does not contain measures to achieve the goal of conservation and sustainable management of sharks. It appears to have been published out of political obligation," said Ricardo Aguilar, the group's European director of investigation.
The campaigners said that the adopted plan outlines "only an unclear and gradual" implementation timeline and lacks a mechanism to review effectiveness. It also contains no measures that accurately regulate the number of shark bodies and fins that can be landed in order to put a stop to illegal finning practices.
The group also unfavourably compared the commission proposals to the national shark legislation of major shark-fishery nation Spain, which has imposed hard catch limits on species that are caught commercially and a prohibition on fishing of vulnerable species.