Shark fishing continues in India despite ban
Conservationists were ecstatic when the Union Ministry of Environment, alarmed by the depleting population of sharks off the country's coast, included all varieties of shark in Schedule One of the Wildlife Protection Act in July 2001.
Bhubaneswar January 7, 2002
ISSUE DATE: January 7, 2002
UPDATED: September 17, 2012 14:02 IST
IN FISHERMAN-INFESTED WATERS: Officials with seized sharks
Conservationists were ecstatic when the Union Ministry of Environment, alarmed by the depleting population of sharks off the country's coast, included all varieties of shark in Schedule One of the Wildlife Protection Act in July 2001. This basically meant that sharks were granted the same degree of security as tigers.
But the celebrations proved to be premature. Recently, Indian Forest Service officer Sanjeev Chaddha raided the fishermen's village of Pentakotha on the Orissa coast, recovering a huge number of illegally fished sharks.
The raid prompted the powerful lobby of traders in shark products, with an estimated annual turnover of over Rs 200 crore, to petition the ministry, pleading that the ban on shark fishing would deprive many fishermen of their livelihood.
The ministry denotified sharks from Schedule One earlier this month. "The denotification was dubious and will ring the death knell for sharks," argues Biswajit Mohanty of the Wildlife Society of Orissa.
Shark fin, used to make soup that is popular in many countries, is often obtained in a gruesome manner: the fin is sliced off and the shark bleeds to death.
From meat to oil, the parts of a shark's body have various uses and a big shark could, on a good day, fetch as much as Rs 30,000. No wonder the shark population has virtually been wiped out in several oceans.
They could be putting up their last stand in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, argue conservationists.
Sharks are at the very top of the marine food chain. Their absence will upset the fine balance in the ecosystem much more than the temporary ban on shark fishing has upset the traders.
Good news: Meet the professor who donated over Rs 1 crore to education institutes
Will Shaheen Bagh politics help BJP beat AAP in Delhi?