With a global market worth an estimated £2 billion, the shark meat trade in Brazil is booming. But concerned campaigners say most consumers don’t realize they’re eating shark.
“Why do we work with the shark? Because people like it, it’s good and cheap protein. It doesn’t bring you crazy profits, but it’s pretty decent,” says Helgo Muller, 53, the manager of a company that processes shark meat.
Shark is only a small part of the company’s activity, but it processes about 10 tons a month, most of which is blue shark imported from countries such as Costa Rica, Uruguay, China and Spain.
Consumers prefer shark because it is a cheap meat
Communities along Brazil’s 7,400 km coastline have always eaten sharks.
“It’s part of our tradition,” says Lucas Gabriel Jesus Silva, a 27-year-old whose grandfather moved to the area in the 1960s to fish sharks for their fins.
However, the widespread appetite for shark meat is currently worrying scientists and environmentalists, who fear unsustainable pressure on various species.
Demand has made Brazil the main importer and one of the biggest consumers of shark meat in a global market estimated to be worth $2.6bn (£2bn). notes The Guardian.
The shark, in danger
“Sharks are very vulnerable to overexploitation because they don’t reproduce as often or with as many young as other fish,” explains Professor Aaron MacNeil, from Canada’s Dalhousie University.
For years, conservation efforts have focused on the fin trade with Asia and the barbaric practice of “finning” — removing the fins from a shark and returning the injured and helpless animal, still alive, to the sea.
But research earlier this year suggests finning restrictions have not reduced shark decimation, with at least 80 million sharks still killed annually.
“Brazilians are very poorly informed – they don’t know that cação is a shark, and even when they know, they are often not aware that these animals are endangered,” says Nathalie Gil, president of Sea Shepherd Brasil, a marine conservation organization.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
