- Twenty-nine houndsharks and 16 gulper sharks are up for listing on CITES Appendix II at the wildlife trade regulator’s summit in Uzbekistan this week.
- Conservationists expect the vote to be close, with critics saying “lookalike” species shouldn’t face trade restrictions. Proponents argue it’s necessary given the lack of knowledge among customs officials.
- Houndsharks are widely consumed for their meat in Europe and Australia, while gulpers are hunted for their liver oil.
More than 180 nations gathering in Uzbekistan this week for the annual CITES conference could vote as early as Thursday on a proposal to regulate international trade in nearly 30 species of houndshark, a measure that would bring the vast majority of global shark trade under the wildlife body’s oversight.
The measure would add three endangered houndsharks — the school shark (Galeorhinus galeus), common smoothhound (Mustelus mustelus) and Patagonian narrownose smoothhound (Mustelus schmitti) — as well as 26 lookalike species to CITES Appendix II, which would require countries to set up permit systems certifying that any foreign shipments of the animals are legal and sustainable.
A family of about 40 small-to-medium-sized sharks known as Triakidae, houndsharks are widely consumed for their meat in southern Europe, where they’re eaten in a variety of dishes, and Australia, where they’re often the main component in fish and chips.
Houndsharks can be found in restaurants in Athens, school lunches in Italy and taverns in Spain — though their meat isn’t always labeled as shark, so many people who eat it don’t realize what kind of fish it is.
As bigger shark species have gradually come under CITES control, houndshark fins are increasingly turning up in Hong Kong, the world’s biggest shark fin trade hub, according to a genetic study published last year in Science Advances.
“We also need to protect the small sharks,” Ralf Sonntag, marine biologist at Pro Wildlife, a German NGO, told Mongabay by phone from the Uzbek city of Samarkand, where the conference is taking place. “They all play their role in the ecosystem, and we need to keep them to keep a healthy ecosystem.”
As apex predators, sharks help maintain the balance of food webs. But overfishing has reduced shark abundance in the open ocean by an estimated 71% over the past half century, according to a 2021 study in Nature, making them one of the world’s most threatened vertebrate groups.
Houndsharks tend to inhabit coastal areas, where they are caught in curtain-like gillnets left to hang vertically in the water column. Fishers return later to haul in the nets and collect any animals that have become entangled in them.
The sharks can also venture into deeper waters, where they are caught by trawl vessels dragging large nets through the sea.
Because enforcement officers typically lack the expertise to tell houndshark species apart at landing sites, the animals are often lumped together in official data, making it difficult for authorities to get a handle on trade flows and raising concerns that some species may be declining unnoticed.
Diego Cardeñosa, an assistant professor at Florida International University who led the research in Science Advances, used portable DNA testing to find that several houndshark species were among the most traded sharks in Hong Kong fin markets, a surprising result that he says raises the case for greater management measures.
“One of the first things when you want to try to list something on CITES is, how much is being traded, or how common are these species in large trade hubs,” Cardeñosa told Mongabay.
The last CITES conference was a milestone for sharks and rays, with requiem sharks, hammerheads and guitarfish — some 100 species — added to Appendix II.
Besides the houndshark proposal, a separate measure up for a vote this week would add gulper sharks to Appendix II — namely the dwarf gulper shark (Centrophorus atromarginatus) and gulper shark (Centrophorus granulosus), both endangered, as well as 14 lookalike species from the same family. Gulpers are deepwater sharks primarily targeted for their liver oil, which is used in cosmetics, wellness products and vaccine development.
Most customs officers “cannot distinguish between those different species,” Sonntag said. “So if you don’t put them under the lookalike criterion, enforcement would be much more difficult — it would facilitate laundering.”
NGOs are doing capacity building with fisheries and port control agencies to help them differentiate between shark species, but there is still a long way to go, according to Simone Niedermüller, regional projects manager at the WWF Mediterranean Marine Initiative.
Conservationists said both votes would likely be tight, with opponents arguing that restricting lookalikes goes too far.
Jérôme Jourdain, deputy secretary general of the Union of Fishing Shipowners of France, made that case to Mongabay.
“In France, and more broadly in European waters of the Northeast Atlantic, the catches concern almost exclusively the starry smooth-hound (Mustelus asterias), a well-managed and abundant species, and not the common smooth-hound (Mustelus mustelus), which is extremely rare in our area,” he wrote in an email.
“Such a measure would impose unnecessary and disproportionate burdens on French and European fleets that already operate under strict sustainability rules, without bringing any tangible benefit to the conservation of genuinely threatened populations elsewhere in the world,” he added.
France dominates both landings and exports of common smoothhound meat, according to data from an ongoing shark meat trade research project at Canada’s Dalhousie University cited in the houndshark proposal. West Africa is also a major contributor to trade in the species.
A CITES listing would only affect trade between EU member states and non-EU countries, not among EU member states.
“So this [common smoothhound] trade from Turkey to Greece would be affected, but not the trade, for example, from Croatia to Italy,” WWF’s Niedermüller told Mongabay.
New Zealand and South Africa, meanwhile, export large amounts of school shark to Australia, the Dalhousie University data show.
The New Zealand Department of Conservation said it was “actively considering” the houndshark proposal.
“We understand we are the biggest exporter of school shark, and our school shark population is managed under the Quota Management System which aims to manage stocks sustainably,” Sarah Bagnall, senior international advisor at the agency, said in an emailed statement.
Luke Warwick, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s shark and ray program, wrote in an email that “Argentina and Uruguay play key catch and export roles for smoothound species endemic to the SW Atlantic, sending meat to Asia and Europe.”
Sonntag, who has attended CITES since commercially fished sharks were first voted on, said Japan and China “usually do everything to stop any shark species to get listed. And they have their countries which they work closely together with, and which are dependent on them sometimes.” With a two-thirds majority needed to pass a measure, it would be a “close call.”
“At the end of the day, we know that they are critically endangered — I think that’s the key thing,” he said. “We have to reduce all stress factors as much as we can in order to give them the opportunity to recover.”
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