Sharks killed at alarming rates despite regulations: study

PARIS: Global shark populations are plummeting despite worldwide efforts to curb mass killings for their fins, researchers said in a new report showing that more needs to be done to protect one of the ocean´s apex species.

Between 2012 and 2019, the number of sharks killed from fishing increased from some 76 million a year to more than 80 million, they reported in the journal Science.

At least 25 million were threatened species.

Sharks have prowled Earth´s waters for 400 million years, but a growing appetite for their fins -- a valuable commodity in Asian markets -- has driven several species to the brink of extinction.

Today, 70 percent of countries and jurisdictions have implemented protective regulations to eliminate shark finning, where the top predators are tossed back into the ocean and left to die once fins are removed.

But some of these rules -- which first emerged in the 1990s -- have had unintended consequences that are costing even more sharks their lives, new data revealed.

Finning has marginally declined over the past two decades, but policies requiring fishers to land whole sharks inadvertently incentivised a market for shark meat.

“Anti-finning measures were not the silver bullet we hoped for,” study author Laurenne Schiller told AFP. Researchers spent three years collecting data on fishery regulations and shark mortality.