Shark & ray meat consumption no longer restricted to India’s tribal & coastal peoples: Paper

Shark & ray meat consumption no longer restricted to India’s tribal & coastal peoples: Paper

Subject: Environment

Section: Species in news

Context:   According to a new study he meat of sharks and rays, for long consumed by tribal and coastal people in India, has found favour among new demographic categories such as foreign tourists and Indian middle- and upper classes. This could lead to more unsustainable fishing of shark species, imperiling them in what is already the world’s third biggest exploiter of sharks and rays.

Sharks in India

• Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish that are characterised by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven-gill slits on the sides of the head and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head.
• They are ancient fish, the earliest known sharks date back to more than 420 million years. They range widely in size, from 17 centimetres to nearly 12 metres. There are about 500 different species of sharks in the world.
• Sharks live long. They grow and sexually mature slowly. Unlike most bony fish, they reproduce fewer pups at a time.
• Many shark species are apex predators, essential for the ecosystem they thrive in
• India’s waters have about 160 species of sharks, out of which ten are legally protected, listed under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 – whale shark which was the first fish species to be protected in India, Pondicherry shark which is on the brink of extinction, Gangetic shark which is one of the few freshwater and estuarine sharks in the world (now extinct), speartooth shark, freshwater sawfish, green sawfish, and the giant guitarfish which is becoming rare as it is caught for shark fin soup popular in south-east Asia.
• Sharks have especially been targeted for their fins to make ‘shark fin soup’, considered a delicacy in East Asian cuisine. The process involves cutting the fins of a live shark on board a fishing vessel and then throwing it overboard to die a painful death.
• Over a third of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction globally and overfishing driven by human consumption is a key threat to over 95 per cent of these threatened species, the authors added.
• Sharks and rays have been consumed for centuries by communities living on India’s long coastline as well as tribal groups.
• The study enumerates a number of species that are eaten in the country:
  • Spadenose shark (Scoliodon laticaudus; Near Threatened)
  • Milk shark (Rhizoprionodon acutus; Vulnerable)
  • Gray sharpnose shark (R. oligolinx; Near Threatened)
  • Reticulate whipray (Himantura uarnak; Endangered)
  • Reticulate whipray
• Shark finning and shark fin exports are banned in India, but there are no restrictions on consuming shark meat, except for the species that are protected