Charles Kong Soo

T&T can be the tip­ping point to de­liv­er a crip­pling blow to the glob­al shark fin in­dus­try.This view was ex­pressed by ma­rine ecol­o­gist Rick MacPher­son dur­ing an in­ter­view at the Sun­day Guardian's of­fices on March 21.He said T&T was a ma­jor play­er in the in­ter­na­tion­al shark fin trade, ex­port­ing 332,396 kilo­grams of shark fin in 2011.T&T is ranked the num­ber six coun­try that ex­ports shark fins to Hong Kong–the world's largest shark fin mar­ket.MacPher­son, a coral reef sci­en­tist serv­ing as ad­vis­er to PEW Char­i­ta­ble Trusts, said, "If Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion (PBC) and T&T could be suc­cess­ful in se­ri­ous­ly com­mit­ting to full and strong pro­tec­tion for sharks in the near fu­ture, it could de­liv­er a crip­pling blow to the glob­al shark fin trade."It may be the fi­nal push that is nec­es­sary to show Hong Kong and the world that this is an un­sus­tain­able en­ter­prise and there's an op­por­tu­ni­ty here for T&T to be cen­tre-stage in tak­ing bold, de­ci­sive ac­tion in pro­tect­ing sharks."

'Sharks worth more alivethan dead'

The founder and di­rec­tor of Pela­gia Con­sult­ing said that eco­nom­ic eval­u­a­tions showed that sharks were worth more alive than in a sand­wich or in shark fin soup. It was es­ti­mat­ed that one shark brought in US$1.5 to $1.9 mil­lion for tourism over its life­time.MacPher­son eval­u­at­ed the shark and bake phe­nom­e­nom at Mara­cas Bay on March 18, sam­pling the world-fa­mous Richard's shark and bake and said it was de­li­cious, but the shark it­self wasn't that dis­tinc­tive, if some­one had slipped a Mc­Don­ald's fish fil­let in the bake, he wouldn't know the dif­fer­ence and it was the top­pings and sauces that stood out."It could be any va­ri­ety of fish, even li­on­fish which tastes just as good.It's not the taste of shark that Trinida­di­ans and tourists are en­joy­ing but deep fried food with very flavour­ful top­pings on a fried piece of bread, who wouldn't love that?"MacPher­son said as a con­ser­va­tion­ist and sci­en­tist it was an ex­cit­ing propo­si­tion that T&T could be the place to make a stand against shark finning and ex­ploita­tion, and the goal was with­in reach.

Trinidad Seafoods Ltd CEO:De­mand for shark in­creas­es in 2014

David Lanser, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Trinidad Seafoods Ltd (TSL), said the com­pa­ny saw a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the de­mand for shark in 2014.He said as a re­sult, TSL had some chal­lenges to main­tain con­sis­tent sup­ply in align­ment with its brand promise.Lanser said, "While we're not sci­en­tif­ic ex­perts, our ex­pe­ri­ence is that it is be­com­ing more dif­fi­cult to ac­quire sup­ply."It is our opin­ion that cur­rent fish­ing habits are not sus­tain­able for shark, but a change in the man­age­ment of the fish­eries will tremen­dous­ly im­prove stocks and re­sult in its sus­tain­abil­i­ty."He said cur­rent­ly li­on­fish was not avail­able and does not seem an eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able al­ter­na­tive to shark, but there are oth­er eco­nom­i­cal­ly/en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly vi­able al­ter­na­tives.

De Ver­teuil: Shark sanc­tu­ary cam­paign con­tin­ues in schools

PBC di­rec­tor Marc de Ver­teuil said the next phase of the shark sanc­tu­ary cam­paign was the ed­u­ca­tion­al out­reach to schools where chil­dren will be taught about shark con­ser­va­tion. They al­so in­tend to con­duct a cit­i­zens sci­ence sur­vey which will help the Fish­eries Di­vi­sion in es­tab­lish­ing a base­line for sharks.On March 21 MacPher­son and De Ver­teuil met with En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh, who said he was sym­pa­thet­ic and sup­port­ive of the cause.