Going going.......

Read this post by WhySharksMatter.

And here are the latest figures (May 2009) published by TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network by the WWF and the IUCN.

The preface to the numbers reads as follows.

REPORTED WORLD SHARK CATCH
Species and species groups
The FAO Fishstat Capture Production database reports capture production of sharks for 100 shark species and a further 30 groups. While there appears to have been some improvement in the level of species-specific reporting in recent years, most shark catch remains recorded in generic shark categories.
In 2007, only 20% of the shark catch data reported to FAO was reported on a species basis (up from 15% in 2003). The remaining 80% was reported as various groupings of shark species with over 35% in the single category of “Sharks, rays, skates etc nei5” and a further 18% in the “Rays, stingrays, mantas nei” category.
Total reported shark catch peaked at just under 900 000 t in 2003, then declined to 750 000 t in 2006 before increasing to 780 000 t in 2007.

Trends in catch by species and generic shark categories in the period 2000 to 2007 are shown in Table 1.
Notable trends in the species-specific data over that period include that reported catch of:
• Blue Shark Prionace glauca continued to increase with catch more than doubling to reach 45 000 t in 2007
• Spiny Dogfish Squalus acanthias halved from 32 000 t to around 16 000 t
• Leafscale Gulper Shark Centrophorous squamosus has fallen from over 3000 t in 2000 to 570 t in 2007
• Pacific Guitarfish Rhinobatus planiceps fell from 2600 t to 20 t in 2006 and no catch was reported in 2007
• Portuguese Dogfish Centroscymnus coelolepis fell from over 4000 t in 2004 to just over 700 t in 2007
• Silky Shark Carcharhinus falciformis fell from over 11 000 t in 2000 to around 2500 t in 2007.

Nei refers to ‘not elsewhere included’
In the generic shark categories, reported catch of:
• “Sharks, rays, skates, etc nei” fell from 413 000 t in 2003 to 291 000 t in 2007
• “Various sharks nei” fell from 33 000 t in 2000 to 783 t in 2007
• “Rays, stingrays, mantas nei” peaked at 221 000 t in 2003, but had fallen to 139 000 t by 2007
• “Dogfish sharks nei” increased from 9000 t to 19 000 t, while “Dogfishes and hounds nei” fell from around 3000 t to around 1200 t
• “Raja rays nei” increased from around 6300 t in 2000 to just under 45 000 t in 2007
• “Mantas, devil rays nei” increased from 900 t to over 3300 t
• “Thresher sharks nei” increased from just over 500 t to around 16 000 t in 2007
• “Hammerhead sharks etc nei” increased from around 2000 t to over 3600 t.

As noted above, trends in the data are, however, difficult to interpret.
It is unclear, for example, whether a decline in reported catch of a species represents a decline in abundance, deterioration in reporting of catch data or improvements in species identification which results, over time, in transfer of reported catch from generic categories to species categories. Further, declines in overall shark catch may reflect the impact of stricter national and/or regional controls on shark catch and by-catch, or on fisheries for species in which sharks are taken as by-catch.

You will have to click the pics to get a better magnification

Yes the figures are probably difficult to interpret.
But see the Silkies and Oceanic Whitetips? Going going........
And how they are slaughtering the Blues, Scalloped Hammerheads and Makos?
Luckily the Bulls and coastal Sharks in general seem much less affected. Fingers crossed!

And here are the perpetrators:

Table 3: Average catch of key shark catchers, 2000–2007 (t)

1 Indonesia 110 528
2 India 70 758
3 Spain 57 685
4 Taiwan 48 493
5 Mexico 34 535
6 Pakistan 34 270
7 Argentina 33 639
8 USA 29 909
9 Japan 25 930
10 Malaysia 24 500
11 Thailand 24 156
12 France 22 328
13 Sri Lanka 22 029
14 Brazil 20 498
15 New Zealand 18 260
16 Portugal 15 137
17 UK 14 301

Do you still think this is just an "Asian" problem?
Well - think again.