It is important to have an ocean with all its components, a healthy and functioning ocean
including the top predators.
Sharks were these apex predators on coral reefs for 300 million years until we humans
got there.
And now we are the apex predators in reefs all around the world.
I think one of the biggest problems in fisheries worldwide is we've just got too good at it.
In many things in life, in industry for example, you want to be efficient.
But in terms of fish, you don't want to be too efficient.
If you're too efficient, you take out everything.
We're seeing increased fishing pressure on sharks all over the world through all types
of fishing gear.
Shark populations decreasing pretty badly.
Some estimates say 85% in the last 15 years.
We're in a situation where it's almost we won't be able to get sharks protected until
there's none left by definition and it's a very dangerous position not just for sharks
but for the rest of the ocean because sharks are top predators, you remove them, the knock
on effects through marine ecosystems could be very severe indeed.
Sharks go first and then the reef collapses.
What we have seen over time is that human exploitation of coral reefs has proceeded
in this predictable sequence.
First the large animals go with the large shrimp turtles, then the large carnivores
such as mongsil, sharks, the large roopers, then the smaller fishes go away and finally
the corals that provide the architecture of the ecosystem disappear the last.
Shark fins are quite valuable, some of the most valuable fishery products.
Probably the most valuable sea product pound for pound.
What's changed in the last 20 years or so is that so many more people can afford it.
The markets just exploded, mainland China now has come online as an absolutely massive
new market and at the same time the shark populations are disappearing.
There's this economic incentive to kill sharks just for their fins, to discard the carcass
and to save the space on the boat for more valuable meat.
What shark finning does is it means that I say a tuna boat can take sharks, take off
the fins, throw the meat away which means their hold can still be used for tuna but
they can actually catch thousands and thousands of sharks as well.
The time has really come now where we have to realise that if we don't regulate these
mechanisms they are going to literally kill the golden goose, they're going to destroy
the oceans that we depend on for this food.
