EXPLOITS AND EXPLOITATION
• For centuries, all that was really known about the enigmatic basking shark was the use to which dead individuals could be put. Killed for meat, leather and even for a small bounty as a fisheries’ pest, it was the shark’s enormous oil-rich liver that promised most for those who mastered the hunt. People focused on the least-hazardous killing method (for the hunters that is) and the quickest way to remove the liver – an organ that often weighs more than a tonne and can yield hundreds of litres of squalene, an oil with multiple domestic and industrial uses.
Numbered among the fishermen was naturalist and Ring of Bright Water author Gavin Maxwell, who established a hunt based in Soay near Skye in the 1950s. His early killing experiments included a machine gun. He detailed his commercially disastrous exploits in Harpoon at a Venture and although an exceptionally discomforting read in our more enlightened times, it also hints at a nascent concern for conservation that was fully awakened in later life.
Bolstered by its harpoon-armed whaling fleet, Norway’s take was unparalleled. At its height during the 1970s, the country landed more than 18,000 tonnes annually. Scotland and Ireland joined in the slaughter and from 1947 to 1987, an estimated 77,000 sharks were killed, peaking at 4,500 in 1960. As commercially viable shoals predictably became scarce, industry found alternatives to the oil and its value fell through the ’80s. Even as demand declined, Norwegian hunters killed more than 28,000 sharks between 1989 and 1997.
The species was protected in the UK in 1998; the EU finally banned hunting in 2007. However, the expected respite failed to materialise. A fresh wave of slaughter cut into many shark species’ numbers worldwide as China’s prosperity increased. Demand for high-prestige food such as shark fin soup means that the catastrophic exploitation continues to this day. Yielding up to 90 kilograms of fin, basking sharks are an irresistible target.
The UK government’s recent fin trade ban has been welcomed by conservationists. Of more than 500 species of shark, 143 are listed by the IUCN in a range from ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Critically endangered’. Many are targeted for ‘finning’, a practice labelled by UK officials as ‘indescribably cruel’ and ‘forcing many species to the brink of extinction’. According to government statistics, since 2015, the UK exported 84 tonnes and imported 391 tonnes of shark fins (not including anything imported under the unrecorded 20-kilogram personal allowance). The ban won’t apply to the British Overseas Territories.