While it’s rare to find sharks in the Mediterranean Sea (they are almost extinct), they are not so uncommon in the Red Sea. Its warm waters and ample food source bait sharks who sometimes get personal with bathers and divers. In 2010, a Red Sea white tip shark ate an elderly tourist and just this weekend, a Red Sea shark visited an Eilat, Israel beach, getting within feet of swimmers. There was no mention in media reports if it was a gentle whale shark or a white tip, but in any case no damage was done.

While frightening, most sharks do not attack people. Usually it’s the other way around in Egypt, where diving conservationists are fighting to stop illegal shark hunting. Arab Spring uprisings may have been liberating for the people, in some sense, but these protests and the results have been a failure for sharks. While each shark in the wild fetches about $200,000 a year for the tourism industry (based on its value in creating ecosystem diversity), if sold on the black market for meat, it gets a a quick $150 to $200 bucks.

According to the UPI, Egypt authorities are going to start a probe on illegal shark hunting in Sinai. With all that authority is worth in Sinai in preventing kidnappings, and violence, we doubt to see any results soon.

The marine conservation group Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association in Sinai (one of its researchers is a Green Prophet hero for 2012!), Egypt is working to fight against shark hunters who advertise hunting expeditions for tourists, and who also sell their catch on tourist beaches for dinner.

“HEPCA and the Red Sea community are outraged at the disturbing news coming out of the Suez Governorate; the recurring slaughter of the gentle and endangered whale shark,” a release from the organization said.

It’s likely that the rare shark sighting in Israel at the top of the Red Sea where it meets Sinai, Israel and Jordan, was forced to come there to escape hunting pressures.

Arab Spring violence in Lebanon and Syria, and increased hunting, I was told by Nicole Wexler, an authority at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, has led to an unprecedented number of wolves seeking refuge in Israel from Syria and Lebanon. Most people don’t distinguish them from dogs, which is a good thing for humans with killer instincts.

Woman with whale shark from Shutterstock

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The locals are proud to pose with their dead sharks, rays, and barracudas. Many of them will even open the shark’s mouth for dramatic effect. “Picture, picture,” they said repeatedly as Jacques Van Wyk, a South African paramedic who works for a Dubai-based hotel group, led me through a pungent fish souq in Dubai in search of finned sharks. Along with a rusty spade and rebar, we found a few sharks carelessly strewn in the back of a transport truck.

One of them may be a juvenile whale shark – the gentle giants of the sea. But (I was privately relieved) we did not witness any finning today. That doesn’t mean it has stopped. Just a few days ago, Jacques witnessed 400 kilograms of fins being driven away.

Known at work as the “treehugger,” Jacques (left) first became aware of shark finning when a friend of his took him to a market four and a half years ago. They found a truck full of sharks, which they then followed back to the market where they were being sold. He has been coming to the markets regularly ever since.

If this sounds like a clandestine endeavor, that would be misleading. The salespeople fin sharks with as much indifference as nearby merchants sell their vegetables. They line the sharks up on a short wall at the far end of the market, slice off their fins, and pile them in a truck.

According to Van Wyk, most of the fish here come from Oman. “With so much phytoplankton, those waters are literally teeming with marine life.” But it is not legal to fin in Oman so they are brought to Dubai where they are processed and then shipped off.”

A curious fresh seafood salesman who spoke excellent English, Vijay confirmed that the cheaper fish comes from Oman, but the more expensive fish are caught on lines outside of Dubai.

He also explained that dried shark fins are too dry to eat, that they are only used for their taste.

Shark meat costs as little as $3 for two pounds, while a baby shark fetches approximately $40.

“Shark fin soup is on the menu of many high-profile functions,” Jacques said, “until that ends, the fishermen will continue to fish them.”

That hasn’t stopped Jacques from dreaming about how to make a difference.

In addition to potentially teaming up with Ernst Van Der Poll at Tawasul to screen the film Shark Water at the Jumeirah Beach Dive Center, he is working on plans to help his employer incorporate more environmental programs into their Corporate Social Responsibility portfolio.

Also, he and his girlfriend have plans to walk from Abu Dhabi to South Africa in the next couple of years in order to generate overall environmental awareness.

Having grown up in the bush in South Africa, Jacques is passionate about nature. “Sometimes I get down in the dumps,” he told me after we finally left the market to get fresh air and process what we had seen.

“But it’s good, because that is what gives me the motivation to go on.”

More on shark finning in the UAE:
Working with Fishermen to Tackle Shark Finning
Despite Ban, UAE Is A Market Hub for Shark Finning
UAE Divers Organization: Stop Buying Shark Fins and Shark Fin Soup

The post Reporter’s Notebook: Tasteless Dried Shark Fin For Sale appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s so tempting to attribute anthropogenic qualities to fauna. Take the whale shark Rhincodon typus, sometimes referred to as gentle giants, the largest fish to plow through tropical seas with its wide mouth open. The heaviest on record weighed in at 36 tonnes – as much as a ring of six Barnum and Bailey circus elephants. And yet they are among the least known creatures.

They’re nomadic, but no one knows their favorite haunts, they’re huge, but a sighting can be as furtive as a wanton look, and the ladies are especially sneaky. To learn more about these extraordinary seafaring creatures, Sharkwatch Arabia plans to tag 25 whale sharks over the next five years, starting with two tags donated by Emirati organizations.

Though PhD candidate David Robinson, a marine biologist based in Dubai, did not manage to find or tag any whales during its search last week, the Heriot-Watt University student’s efforts are not in vain.

Using NASA technology to analyze images of whale shark sightings uploaded to sharkwatcharabia.com, Mr. Robinson is able to identify individual whale sharks according to the white spots on the side of their bodies. In the past four months, they have managed to document 23 individual whale sharks, according to The National.

This is an extraordinary achievement since they are notoriously elusive.

“In all the sites what we know is that the whale sharks pass through but they don’t come back. So where are they going? Nobody knows,” Mr. Robinson told the paper.

Most of the sightings that do occur involve males, while the females seem to stay mostly out of view. Where they give birth remains a mystery to science, though some evidence suggests that male whale sharks have stashed a harem or two of females off the coast of Gujarat, India.

Le Méridien Al Aqah Beach Resort in Fujairah and the Emirates Diving Association both sponsored a tag  to further Mr. Robinson’s dissertation research. Each one costs Dh15,000 – just over $4,000 a pop.

Sharkwatch Arabia is a joint effort between Shark Quest Arabia and the Emirates Diving Association to learn more about these filter feeders, a popular draw in the Gulf between May and September.

:: The National

More lovable marine creatures in the Middle East:

Rare Sea Turtles and Other Wildlife Living Happily on Persian Gulf

Is Willie the Grey Whale Lost or Looking for Club Med? (VIDEO

image via Marcel_Ekkel

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