Sharks in the Mediterranean

Written by Peter Tunbridge

Billy Connolly, the Scottish comedian, once said something to the effect that, ever since watching the movie “Jaws”, whenever he gets into the sea, some idiot in his head starts playing the cello: “Der dum...der dum...”.

Considering the huge numbers of tourists who flock to the coastal Var every year, shark attacks in the Mediterranean are remarkably rare. The official figure averages out to only 0.42 shark attacks per year in the entire Mediterranean area and there has never been an unprovoked attack reported off the French Mediterranean coast. In fact, sharks are under considerably more threat from us than we are from them.

Traditionally, sharks were considered as a “by catch” (accidental catch) in fisheries. Today, around 100,000 sharks are still caught accidentally in the Mediterranean every year; most of them trapped in nets intended for tuna and swordfish. However, nowadays sharks are also a specifically-targeted species, due to the rising demand for their highly-valued fins. Sets of shark fins can sell for more than US$700 per kilo and a single basking shark fin once sold for nearly US$10,000.

There is also an active black market trade in shark fins and wildlife conservation groups claim they have no real way of knowing exactly how many sharks are killed each year, but they fear it is way above officially-reported figures.

The rest of the fish is not as valuable and this has given rise to a barbaric and scandalously wasteful industry called “finning”, whereby live sharks are definned on board ship and the rest of the shark (minus its fins) is tossed back overboard. Unable to swim, the mutilated sharks are subsequently condemned to a slow death by suffocation.

As the demand for shark fins feeds the growth of the finning industry, sharks, as a species, are becoming increasingly endangered: they generally grow slowly, mature late and produce few young, making them slow to recover from stock depletion and highly-vulnerable to over-fishing.

Their dwindling numbers are liable to have a serious knock-on effect on other marine life since removing the apex predator from any food chain will inevitably lead to an unhealthy imbalance somewhere else along the line. Like lions on the African plain, sharks also fulfill the role of weeding out sick or weakened prey animals, thus keeping the overall stock healthy.

Can the consumer do anything to help take the pressure off the shark? In France, shark meat is often sold under the name of “aiguillat” or “aiguillat commun” and “saumonette”, so one way to help would be to avoid buying these products. On the pharmaceutical shelf, one can find a range of shark liver oil products sold in capsule form, which may have “huile de foie squalene” included in the list of ingredients. One can also find capsules containing powdered shark cartilage which are sold as miracle cures to treat all manner of diseases and ailments, despite a lack of scientific evidence to back up any claims of their eventual efficacity.

As international travellers, we can avoid leatherware, such as shoes, handbags, wallets and belts made from shark skin and jewellery and souvenirs made from sharks’ teeth.

THE GREAT WHITE

There are 46 known species in the Mediterranean, 16 of them measuring 3 metres or more in length, including Carcharodon carcharias, otherwise known as the Great White, White Death or simply “man eater”. “Carcharodon” comes from the Greek “karcharos”, which means sharp or jagged and “odous”, which means tooth.

Despite modern technological advances, surprisingly little is still known about the Great White and therefore much of the available data is based on estimation.

198 Days in Captivity

The main reason for this is that Great Whites do not adapt well to life in an aquarium and captive births are unknown. Until 2004, when Monterey Bay Aquarium in California succeeded in keeping a young, female Great White alive in captivity for 198 days, the world record for the survival of a Great White in artificially-created conditions was just 11 days.

Great Whites are ovoviviparous: their embryos hatch in uteri and nourish themselves by feeding on unfertilised eggs in the uterus. The period of gestation could be anything up to one year. It is believed that Great Whites produce litters of between 2 and 10 pups, which measure around 120cms at birth. Females reach sexual maturity at between 12 and 15 years and males, at 8 or 9 years.

“It was THIS big!”

“The one that got away” always seems bigger than the norm and sharks are no exception. If you believe the unsubstantiated stories, some fishermen claim to have nearly caught specimens measuring more than 7m. However, the largest specimen ever captured (and reliably measured) was only 6.4m long. The average size of a mature Great White is around 6 metres.

One of the reasons that Great Whites do not make a habit of dining on bathers off la Côte Varoise is perhaps because they are pelagic fish, meaning they tend to favour the open sea, rather than hugging the coastline. In any case, we don’t figure in their diet sheet, which consists of rays, smaller sharks, dolphins, porpoises, whale carcasses, seals and sea turtles.

Great Whites are listed as “Endangered Mediterranean Fish” under Annex II of a protocol to the Barcelona Convention (1993).

Find out more about sharks in the Med and their conservation at: www.oceana.org and www.sharkalliance.org

Article from The Riviera Reporter Var Supplement, issue October/November 2007

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