Sharks can be worth far more when they are swimming around the reef than when they are in a bowl of soup — as much as nearly US$2 million each, in fact, according to the results of a study released on Monday.
For the study, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science considered the expenditures of divers who travel from around the world to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau to dive with the mainly gray reef and reef whitetip sharks that inhabit its waters, which were declared a shark sanctuary in 2009.
As a remote country of more than 300 islands — Manila, more than 800km away, is the closest city of consequence — Palau does not have many attractions beyond diving, so spending by international tourists on airfare, lodging and diving makes up an important part of the nation’s economy.
Photo: AFP
The economic logic is straightforward: Diver tourism contributes about 39 percent of the country’s GDP of US$218 million, and 21 percent of divers chose their vacation there specifically to see the sharks, meaning that tourism to view sharks contributes about 8 percent of GDP, the study said. The researchers concluded that the roughly 100 sharks that inhabit the prime dive sites were each worth US$179,000 annually to the island nation’s tourism industry, and that each shark had a lifetime value of US$1.9 million.
Sold in pieces for their fins and meat, those same 100 sharks would be worth only about US$10,800 total, the researchers estimated.
“It clearly indicates that no matter how you slice it, that a shark is worth more in the water than the sum of its parts when it’s cut up and sold,” said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group, which financed the study.
The Australian researchers were not the first to reach this conclusion, but they found individual sharks to have a much higher value than previous studies did. A study conducted in the Maldives had found the sharks to be worth US$33,500 each to the government of that country. The Bahamas, cognizant of the tourism draw, bills itself as the “Shark Diving Capital of The World.”
Millions of sharks are killed each year for their fins or as bycatch, but there has been halting political progress toward reducing the pressure, like the creation of Palau’s shark sanctuary, the world’s first.
Just a few years earlier, Palau had been considering opening a shark fishery with the aim of exporting fins.
Local residents now gain an estimated US$1.2 million annually from the shark-diving trade, the researchers found, while the government reaps about US$1.5 million.
With warm clear seas and World War II wrecks, Palau is a special place, of course. Mark Keegan, principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the lead researcher for the study, said in an interview that the same economics might not apply to sharks in, say, the cold waters of the North Atlantic.
Still, there is a strong argument that sharks are an economically valuable part of the ecosystem, he said, noting that the Chesapeake Bay scallop industry was devastated in recent years by a proliferation of cownose rays caused partly by the overfishing of the rays’ main predators, which include hammerheads and other sharks.
Sharks grow slowly and give birth to few young, Rand said.
“Once they lose these species, they won’t recover like other fish,” he said, adding that quick action was therefore needed by governments.
“Fishermen see sharks as a commodity,” Keegan said. “We see them as an important part of the ecosystem. That’s a very hard argument to make to them. But make an economic argument, that it’s worth more letting people look at it than it is taking it, that’s something they can understand.”
The idea is catching on. The Maldives has declared itself a shark sanctuary, and tourism operators and conservationists in Fiji, the Bahamas and other dive destinations are now calling for shark protections.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of