Great news: Porbeagle protected from commercial fishing!

[The Austrian]

The European Union extends rules to help dwindling porbeagle stocks recover.

Great news for shark anglers, following moves by the European Union to officially extend measures to protect the porbeagle from commercial fishing.

With the species recognised as having a depleted conservation status, the EU has acted to increase protection levels for the shark, regonising that the levels of protection differed massively across different European waters.

The existed EU regulations have now been amended in to address this, prohibiting commercial fishing for porbeagles in all EU waters including the Mediterranean and by EU vessels fishing in international waters. Plus, should a porbeagle be caught accidentally they must now be released immediately.

“The protection of porbeagles by the EU represents an important step for the conservation of this species,” said Dr. Allison Perry, wildlife marine scientist with Oceana Europe.
“However, given its highly migratory nature, if porbeagles are to recover, similar actions must follow at the international level”.

Threatened by decades of over-exploitation, porbeagles have undergone severe population declines and are considered to be Critically Endangered in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
Because they are relatively slow-growing, late-maturing, and long-lived, they are very slow to recover from depletion.

A stock assessment of porbeagles in 2009, carried out jointly by scientists from ICCAT and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) concluded that no targeted fishing or landings of these sharks should be permitted, and that even with no fishing, the porbeagle population in the Northeast Atlantic would take up to 34 years to recover.

In the Mediterranean, porbeagles are estimated to have declined by up to 99% since the mid-20th century.

source: http://totalseamagazine.com/news/item/1 ... protection

[corbyeire]

great news hopefully it is enforced