Shark Finning in the Galapagos
The equation is straightforward: Too many people attempting to live permanently in the Galapagos + too few jobs to go around = a percentage are resorting to illegal economies to survive. Shark finning is one of those illegalities, and still growing. Financed by mafias based in mainland Ecuador, fins are taken – hacked off, the useless carcasses tossed overboard – and sent abroad for shark fin soup. Japanese are the biggest culprits though there are restaurants as far away as Norway and Germany, which sell the soup as well. The sad reality is that not only is it a complete waste of the shark but the fins have absolutely no taste, no nutritional value. It’s all about the show. If you can afford shark fin soup – at a business meeting, wedding, anniversary – it means you’ve got the bucks to spend on a frivolity.
You’ve seen the television ads recently promoting various shark weeks? Fear continues to sell mediocre TV, thus the boom of such shows. Another statistic: How many people are killed by sharks each year worldwide? On average, four or five. How many sharks does man kill each year, some for food, others for showy displays of money? More than seventy million. It’s the sharks that should be swimming away from us as fast as they can.
Over fishing around the globe is a huge problem. The over fishing of sharks, especially the big ones, known as “apex predators” (including the great white and reef sharks) is particularly damaging to the marine cycle since sharks maintain the populations of smaller fish that in turn feed on smaller fish that people consume commercially. Minus the predators, these sub-predators run rampant and decimate smaller fish stocks. While we may think there are unlimited numbers of fish in the sea, the more we rapaciously take the fewer species will live on into the coming decades. One more statistic? The World Wildlife Fund expects all of the fish that we know today to be gone by 2050. That’s what we should be scared of, not the very slim potential of becoming lunch while enjoying a sunny holiday at the beach. (To find a detailed chart and database of the world’s endangered sharks, visit the Shark Foundation.)
Recent attempts to bolster international fishing laws may be getting an extra push in the U.S. pending the passage of legislation now being considered in the Senate (and recently passed in the House). The legislation is designed to close most of the loopholes in the current ban on shark finning in American waters. Hopefully other nations will follow suit. (International Fisheries Law and Policy Portal.)
In the Galapagos we spent time with Godfrey Merlen, who represents San Francisco-based Wild Aid there. A twenty-year resident, he leads the group’s local efforts against illegal wildlife trafficking. Small groups of paid informants keep him alert to who in the relatively small community are shark finning (as well as poaching sea cucumbers and other at-risk species). Unfortunately once the fins are back in mainland Ecuador, even when seized by officials they often end up back in the illegal markets. Corruption is a boom business in Ecuador too.
“Over fishing of a number species is a reality in the Galapagos and in some ways – for some species, like lobsters – it’s a little bit late to talk about. We also know that thousands and thousands of sea cucumbers are recovered from illegal fisheries every year, which has had a depressing effect on the remaining population and makes management of it near impossible.
“Still, even though we know it’s going on, illegal sea cucumber gathering is an active component of the fisheries here and brings in considerable money. Just recently, at the end February, there was a capture of thirty sacks of cucumbers on the mainland, about 3,000 pounds, with an estimated value of about $200,000. This is a lot of money and a lot of sea cucumbers. Most of them came from right here in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Local fishermen say, What are we supposed to do, what are we supposed to fish? Lobster and grouper are nearly gone. So they get into the illegal market very, very simply and easily. Though the national park has patrol boats and keeps up vigilance the area is enormous and enforcement is difficult. As a result it’s been extremely easy to export illegal produce from the Galapagos.
“It’s exactly the same with the shark fin. Sharking finning, the removal of the fins and leaving the bodies to rot either in the ocean or on the shoreline, has become very common in Galapagos. Again, the fishermen say, “I have a lot of debt, I need to buy a new motor for my boat, and I don’t have any money.” Then someone comes along and says, Well, okay, I’ll lend you money but what I want is sea cucumbers, shark fins, sea lion penises, seahorses, whatever is the going mode especially in the far eastern countries where money is not a problem. Huge sums of money can be poured into a place like the Galapagos to fuel an illegal fishery. In the long run of course things can only go from bad to worse for the fishery.
“As resources decline whether through legal or illegal fisheries the resource is the basis of the fisherman’s economy. As those resources decline, incomes decline too and the cost of living keeps going up. Sooner or later the price of fuel will jump back up; currently it’s a very false $1 a gallon for diesel. What the fishermen fail to understand is that ultimately all these illegal activities combined with the lack of a sufficiently strong fisheries management, at a certain point the fishing sector of the economy will collapse.
“At the moment the fisherman finds himself in a really hot spot, partially through his own failure to appreciate the risks he’s running. He may make money today but tomorrow he will not make money. He’s already discovered that with the sea cucumber. Basically the fishermen have very little money because the resource is disappearing.”
Tags: Apex Predators, Galapagos, Germany, Japanese, Norway, overfishing, Sea Cucumbers, Shark Fin Soup, Shark Finning, Shark Fins, The World Wildlife Fund, Video, Wild Aid
The Galapagos are doomed as they are part of Ecuador, one of the most corrupt countries in Latin America.
I lived in Quito for seven years, and visited the Galapagos at least once a year. During those trips I could see for myself how the shark populations were dwindling because of the criminal practice of shark finning.
Early in 2005 I decided to boycott the islands, and wrote the following article which was widely publicized in the internet and the print media. Naturally, it had no effect whatsoever. Most tourist who go to the Galapagos have no clue what is happening there, and don’t seem to care. The few who know and care have no chance to bring about change as they have powerful adversaries: The shark fin mafia, and totally corrupt government officials.
Some NGO’s (Europeans or North Ameicans – blue-eyed gringos) are gullible enough to believe that the Ecuadorians, the ones who could make a difference (e.g.politicians, law enforcement officials), are interested in protecting the shark populations and other endangered species because they say so. They are not. If they were, shark finning would at least decline. This is not the case – quite the contrary as the demand for the fins increases, so does the illegal killing of the sharks in the Galapgos and elsewhere in Ecuador.
Here is the article I wrote:
SLAUGHTER IN PARADISE: J’ ACCUSE!
By Wolfgang Leander
Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands as a young man on a voyage in 1835. His keen observation of the island flora and fauna found nowhere else on earth led him directly toward his revolutionizing theory of natural selection and the evolution of species.
Not much later, in 1841, Herman Melville sailed to the Galapagos on a whaling vessel and wrote a captivating travel report about the magic volcanic archipelago, appropriately called “Las Encantadas”, the “Enchanted Islands”.
Ecuador claimed the “Encantadas” in 1832 from Spain. At that time they seemed to be of no value to any imperial power. In 1978, the UNESCO declared the Galapagos a World Heritage Site. Today, the islands are Ecuador’s top tourist destination, generating well over USD 150 million per year in revenues. Nature lovers consider the ‘enchanted’ islands a paradise.
Yet, this paradise is in deep trouble.
There is growing concern among local and international scientists and conservationists that massive tourism, illegal immigration, pollution, over-fishing, and political meddling seriously threaten the islands.
Headlines of articles on the Galapagos typically read as follows: “Conservation on the Brink”; “World Heritage in Danger”; “Longline Fishing to be allowed in the Galapagos”; “Chaos reigns in the Galapagos National Park”; “Sharks under Threat”.
“El Comercio”, one of the leading Ecuadorian daily newspapers, published an alarmingly realistic article on shark finning in the Galapagos on March 15, 2005, under the heading: “The massacre of Sharks in the Galapagos continues at an accelerated rate”.
‘Finning’ is a brutal way to slice off the fins of sharks, often from live animals, then dumping the helpless creatures back into the ocean to face an agonizing death.
Current finning is a relapse into bad practice that was already outlawed. Shark fishing and the export of shark fins was banned in September 2004 after a long battle between militant local fishermen and the government, which had to give in to massive pressure from international conservationist organizations. However, the illegal practice of shark finning carried out with the tacit approval of the Ecuadorian Navy and local law enforcement officers never diminished.
The “International Galapagos Tour Operators Association” (IGTOA) fears the worst. In their January 2005 bulletin they came to the sobering conclusion that they are “slowly but surely losing the fight to preserve the Galapagos Islands.” And: “With neither government understanding nor support, and corruption from top to bottom, the future is bleak.”
There is simply no political will to end the chaotic situation in the Galapagos National Park. Eleven Park Directors, probably none of them with much commitment to their duties, have come and gone in the past 24 months. The fact eloquently speaks for itself.
Under these deplorable circumstances the “aleteros” (= finners), which is what the shark fishermen are being called, feel quite uninhibited to operate within the boundaries of the Marine Reserve.
Experts estimate the number of sharks killed in the Galapagos solely for their fins to amount to as many as 600.000-700.000 per year. That represents some 80 percent of all the sharks caught in Ecuador, the fishing port of Manta being the principal “killing center” on the mainland.
The politics behind it would completely astound na•ve international observers. On March 5, 2005, the recently ousted president of Ecuador, Lucio Gutierrez, visited the Galapagos and held extensive meetings with representatives of the local fishing community. Exactly one week later, Gutierrez signed a decree to re-allow the export of shark fins as long as sharks are being caught as “by-catch”, effectively annulling the September 2004 prohibition to export shark fins.
This is utterly cynical and outrageous as the new decree opens the door to indiscriminate, totally uncontrolled shark finning. The Galapagos fishermen, some of whom are known as an aggressive lot of criminal thugs, will concentrate on fishing sharks and innocently declare their catch as being “accidental”.
In 1998, Transparency International in Berlin ranked Ecuador among the most corrupt countries in the world. Two years later the Andean nation was awarded the dubious distinction of being the most corrupt country in Latin America.
Corruption in this small banana-exporting country is indeed all-pervasive. Hardly anything works in Ecuador unless appropriately “lubricated”.
Lucio Gutierrez, a formerly obscure army colonel who staged an ill-fated coup d’etat early in 2000, promised to relentlessly fight corruption during the 2002 electoral campaign – a pious obligation every Ecuadorian presidential candidate routinely vows to comply with in order to win votes.
After only a few months in power, Gutierrez’ popularity began plummeting to pitifully low levels. Most Ecuadorians considered him corrupt and incompetent. He is said to have shamelessly served his clientele with little regard to public opinion.
Gutierrez is not in charge anymore; angry protesters kicked him out of power on April 22 – the third Ecuadorian president to be ousted within the past 8 years. More than ever, politics in Ecuador seem to be about corrupt administrations these days…
The fish begins to stink at the head, as we say in Germany. What can thus be expected from lower ranking politicians? Not much, really. That is the bitter truth. Unfortunately, the IGTOA are absolutely right in their somber appreciation of the realities in the Galapagos.
I talked with many islanders recently: Dive operators, licensed guides, hotel and restaurant owners – people who deeply care about their islands and who are completely appalled at what they are witnessing first hand. Some are perhaps too afraid to speak out, others feel completely powerless before the tightly knit web of complicity among fishermen, politicians, members of the Navy personnel, and the international shark fin dealer mafia.
Most of the young people I spoke to believe they can do little about it. They compare illicit shark finning to the business of drug trafficking where everything is about big, big money and thus next to impossible to control. The analogy may not be far-fetched.
However, there is a significant difference: Drug consumption is a socio-pathological problem that will not throw the world out of balance. But the unrelenting demand for shark fins to be processed into a costly broth of alleged aphrodisiac value to cater to an ever growing number of mindless shark fin soup consumers in East Asia will inexorably lead to the extinction of sharks.
This is what WildAid, a US based conservation agency working in the Galapagos,has to say in this context:
“The indiscriminate slaughter of sharks to satisfy this growing market is causing drastic and irreversible changes to Galapagos biodiversity. Why? Sharks help maintain healthy, balanced populations of fish, birds and marine animals preying upon the weak, diseased and injured. Additionally, countless species of cleaner fish depend on sharks to provide them with sustenance. The removal of the sharks from this complex ecological equation would be catastrophic.”
Hence the urgency of stopping shark slaughter NOW, not just in Ecuador but world-wide.
However insignificant and largely unnoticed, there are some encouraging signs of positive action amid the gloomy scenario worth to be recorded. Mathias Espinosa, an ecologically minded German-Ecuadorian diver and owner of Scubaiguana, the best-run dive operator in the Galapagos, is doing what he considers his modest share in trying to make a difference.
In order to motivate his fellow “galapaguenos” to love their islands, instead of exploiting them, Mathias introduces shark fishermen to the undersea world, awakening in them the sense of appreciation of the marvels that surround them while swimming underwater.
Seemingly senseless butchers thus learn to see sharks not as a sought after commodity but as irreplaceable marine creatures that need to be protected from human greed and ignorance.
Mathias’ blue eyes beam as he recounts how good he felt when he began to train several shark fishermen to become enthusiastic professional dive masters and fully committed conservationists way back in the nineties. One of them, Juan Carlos Moncayo or “Macarron” as he is commonly known in Puerto Ayora, has become a free-lance dive instructor who passes on his passion for the ocean and its creatures to the next generation of professional dive guides.
Several countries and island states such as the Bahamas have successfully developed extremely lucrative eco-tourism industries based on diving with sharks. With dedicated people like Mathias Espinosa and many others resident divers, the Galapagos Islands could be one of those places were it not being wasted by the short-sightedness of ignorant, greedy and careless individuals.
I have been visiting, and diving, the Galapagos for seven consecutive years since 1999, and I could see for myself how sharks, especially Scalloped Hammerhead sharks and Galapagos sharks, were getting scarcer every year I came back.
You will see many photographs of Galapagos sharks in this website. Virtually all of these pictures were taken while free-diving at a small island next to Floreana, called Enderby Island. I would normally see at least 10-15 Galapagos sharks every single time I dove there. This year I saw not even one.
As I was later told, shark fishermen had “discovered” Enderby Island sometime in mid-July 2004 and managed to clean the area within a few weeks. Some dive masters confirmed to me that they saw the mutilated shark carcasses lying at the bottom of the sea. I was depressed beyond hope. I felt as if I had lost good friends ….Yes, when it comes to sharks I get quite emotional…
Regretfully, diplomacy or appealing to common sense simply does not work to solve the grave problems in the Galapagos. Therefore, only the most drastic measures could force the Ecuadorian authorities to finally put an end to the irresponsible killing of sharks, and other environmental crimes being committed in the Galapagos Marine Reserve and elsewhere in the region:
1) The UNESCO should withdraw the status, and funding, of the Galapagos as World Heritage Site, and publicly brand Ecuador for not effectively safe-guarding this unique sanctuary from environmental terrorists which include corrupt government officials;
2) The donor countries should cut foreign aid to Ecuador as long as the laws to protect the Islands, which would have to include a strict control on immigration from the mainland, are being largely ignored by the authorities;
3) International tourism to Ecuador, not just to the Galapagos, should be boycotted even though this would temporarily hurt innocent people.
These measures would amount to declaring war on corruption in Ecuador. Unconditional war on corruption and ecological predation is the only way to win the fight if there is still a chance to preserve what is left of the islands for humanity and the rest of the biosphere.
Cochabamba / Bolivia
May 1, 2005
I think that sharks are one of the most beautiful animals to ever live. and now because we want to we can just kill them. it is gross and makes me sick to my stomach. i think that we should stop this and i am happy that people like you guys are out there trying to do so. if there is anything i can do to help let me know. thanks michelle
Unless a worldwide Coast Guard is established to protect marine life we sadly will see what the World Wildlife Fund has predicted as the extinction of the fish that have swam the seas for millions of years. Either that or a takeover of the countries by western nations to stem the slaughter.
Articles can be written in travel magazines for tourists to boycott the country, we can also petition UNESCO to withdraw the status, funding and category of World Heritage Site status through http://www.petitionsite.com or http://www.care2.com.
This shameful, cruel practice must be stopped.
I live in St. Thomas US Virgin Islands and have seen over the 30 years that I have lived in the Caribbean, the decline of many marine species, a human population explosion, millions of tourists along with their insatiable taste for fish, plastic garbage in the oceans, it is too sad and can be reversed. But it calls for radical and drastic action.
Thanks. What do you think about the Galapgos being taken off the U.N. World Heritage’s “Endangered List?”
http://jonbowermaster.com/blog/2010/08/un-endangered-list-galapagos-off-everglades-on/
It always seems to be “Shark Week” somewhere, doesn’t it!
Have a look at this recent posting: http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/08/03/shark-week-churns-up-unwarranted-fears
How would getting the Galapagos off UN heritage site be done?
It seems like a good idea.
As a place i have always wanted to dive , i won`t be going till this has stopped , i think all divers should refuse to vist the islands aswell , hit them were it hurts , in there pockets , NO TOURISTS , NO MONEY , don`t go .
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Would it make sense to ban shark soup around the world?? I will make it a point to tell the restaurants of the world that it’s not right to kill sharks for their fins…and not order the shark fin soup….And for the people who order it on a regular basis you should be ashamed of yourselves…..Really people from what I understand the soup has no taste, so why consume it??? Let’s put an end to this treatment of our worlds oceans janitors….Thanks
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