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Unfortunately for the Porbeagle Shark they are worth about £2 per kilo,
that’s about £500 to a fisherman for an adult shark, and they are worth
a lot more by the time it ends up on a plate in a top restaurant as
“veau-de-mer” This is not a fish you can buy in a chip shop. A few years
ago a Newlyn boat, “The Prevail” using a 6 mile long-line baited with
mackerel, returned to harbour weighed down with 64 adult porbeagles, and
in the next nine days landed 63 more. The Shark Trust, a conservation
body, condemned the targeting of this particular shark as short-sighted
and potentially dangerous. Their dismay is based on a grim fact of
biology. Sharks are slow growing, mature late, and produce few young.
Unlike Cod, which lays thousands of eggs, the porbeagle gives birth to
just four pups a year, and that is after a nine months pregnancy.
 Allowing
for the numerous hazards awaiting a young shark, this provides for a
population increase of between 5 to 7 per cent per year. Once you factor
in fishing pressure from fast modern vessels equipped with ling-lines or
vast seine nets the sharks have no chance. Far more are being caught
than can be replaced.
At a meeting in Oxford to discuss the global plight of migratory open
water sharks, the Shark specialist Group of the World Conservation Union
agreed that practically every species of large shark found in European
waters are heading for extinction. And the problem is entirely man made.
Despite mounting threats and evidence of decline, there are no
international catch limits for open sea sharks. We are blindly fishing
them into oblivion.
As far as the North-east Atlantic and the Mediterranean are concerned,
the solution is in the hands of the European Union which has powers to
impose regulations throughout the area, and they eventually agreed to
act. The EU regulates fishing by mean of TAC or Total Allowable Catch
and last year they agreed on the size of the TAC—an annual EU quota of
174 tons.
According to the Fisheries Council’s press release last December, the
TAC. on porbeagle was adopted.
Except
that it wasn’t! It
transpired that the proposal was torpedoed at the last minute by EU
Fisheries ministers. The argument, it seems, fell apart on a
technicality. TACs are made to conserve stocks, but the porbeagle had
become too depleted to warrant a TAC. Behind the wordplay
conservationists strongly
suspect
intervention by France and Spain. Despite growing public concern, it
seems the EU Commission was swayed more by self interested fishing
lobbies than the arguments of conservationists and scientists.
The IWC,
International Whaling Commissions annual meeting in Anchorage
Alaska has seen deadlock on it’s second day over Greenland’s plans to
expand its Inuit Whale Hunt. The West Greenland bid proved unusually
controversial.. It wanted to increase the number of Minke Whales taken
from 175 to 200 and include 10 Humpbacks and 2 Bowhead Whales for the
first time. I have not heard the final outcome of that meeting.
There
were 16 reported sightings of Bottlenose Dolphins during May, 10 of
those reports were of a pod of 6 to 8 travelling between Penzance and
Perranporth, and the other reports were of the two well known Bottlenose
that visits harbours. There was another pod of 6 off Port Quin on the
30th, probably a different pod because 6 were seen off Cape Cornwall on
that day.
Only
two reports of Common Dolphins, one of which was of 6 being chased by
Bottlenose off St. Ives on the 15th and the other report was of a 100 or
more 36 miles north of St Ives, some of which were bow riding a fishing
boat for a while.
Twelve
Risso's Dolphin were seen off Fowey on the 3rd and 2 Risso's Dolphin
were in St. John’s Lake, between Torpoint and Millbrook on the 8th and
the 9th of May. There was only one report of Harbour Porpoises, 5 off St
Anthony Head on the 12th May. There were 14 reports of one or two
Basking Sharks, all between Mounts Bay and the Avarack near Pendeen on
the north coast. A few of them were reported to be about 30 ft long.
There were 5 sightings of Grey Seals reported.
Three
dead Common Dolphins, were found stranded during April, one at Falmouth
Harbour, another at Perranuthnoe and a third at Carlean Cove near
Poltesco. A Harbour Porpoise was found stranded at Mousehole a Grey Seal
on the Isles of Scilly and a Grey Seal pup at Wanson Mouth, Widemouth
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