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Tanjung Luar fishermen need 15 to 20 days to chase sharks and catch dozens during this period, said Safruddin, a fisherman specializing in sharks. When he is not at sea, he also works as a shark of sharks on the market, cutting the fins in the desired parts and selling them to shark warehouses.
The fishermen capture the shark on wooden boats with gas engines. The operational costs of going to sea are relatively high, reaching 15 million Indonesian rupees per trip or more than US $ 900 at the current exchange rate. They use long drift and bottom fishing rods.
Safruddin said it was difficult to prevent fishermen from catching sharks at East Lombok.
“It was a hereditary work from the previous generation to our generation,” he said. “And this has become a daily livelihood for people here to earn a living and the market price is always promising.”
The fins, meat, skin, bones and teeth all bring money.
A declining diet
Together, Tanjung Luar fishermen can bring about 10-30 sharks per day weighing 20 to 30 kilograms each. Sharks are sold at auction for 600,000 to 1 million rupees per shark, or $ 35 at $ 62 each.
The market can accept 200 sharks per day and a decade ago, fishermen could meet this demand. But not these days, because overfishing decreased the supply of the ocean.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that more than 270,000 sharks are killed every day. Often targeted for their fins, this practice affects many species of different sharks, including whale sharks.
A way people kill sharks are also in shark. This involves catching sharks, withdrawing their fins and rejecting them in the ocean, where they often die from the dead. Indonesia is the greatest contributor to the death of sharks in the world, as well as other tropical countries, including Brazil, Mauritania and Mexico. Overfishing now leads to most species to extinction.
Shark fins are in demand because of their monetary and cultural value. Although all parts of the shark body are sold, the finish of the fins, the most expensive part, has long been controversial; The price of a single fin can reach the equivalent of 3 million rupees or approximately $ 185 per kilogram for exports to China, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan.
A food frenzy
People in China consider shark fins as a delicious food and believe that they are an aphrodisiac and a cancer remedy. With the rise of the middle class in China, the request for shark fins has survived there.
Japan is also a major market, with more than half of the exports of Indonesian shark fins which take place to this country. Over the past five years, Japan has imported more than $ 2 million a year of shark fins from Indonesia, reflecting high demand despite the global shark push.
The shark fins on the East Lombok island is regulated by the Indonesian government. Its implementation is the responsibility of the Coastal and Marine Resources Management Center which has the power to provide permits and legalization to traders.
In Tanjung Luar, only two traders have licenses. Legal merchants work with shark fishermen to be preserved in the government established by the government and are monitored by several government agencies.
In the past, the shark’s body would be thrown after the fins of the fins. But the local community now treats shark meat in food such as meatballs, Satay and smoked meat, which can be sold at a much more affordable price.
An illegal trade continues.
A common shark culinary product is the Satay shark. A Satay shark skewer is at the price of 5,000 rupees, about 30 cents, and the skewers are distributed to several traditional East Lombok markets that sell shark meat.
In addition to the legal trade in authorized captures, there is an illegal trade in hammers and lanceolate sharks, which are both listed as in the process of disappearing by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources or IUCN. The Indonesian government regulates the capture, maintenance and trade in endangered species.
The latest IUCN reports that over the past 20 years, global demand for shark meat has almost doubled, the value of sharks and radius meat of the world’s value for the world of fins. During this period, trade has been considerably diversified and today, products such as Ray Gill plates, liver oil and skins are valued at almost $ 1 billion each year.
At the same time, environmentalists are starting to see the efforts of governments such as Indonesia to preserve the populations of sharks and other in the end. Armed with two decades of research and major policy changes, groups like the IUCN conceive specific solutions to the country to guide governments in the implementation of conservation measures and sustainable fisheries.
“Almost 20 years after the first report, there have been drastic changes,” said Alexandra Morata, head of the program for the Specialized Group of Survival Commission for UICN, “with sharks and rays now among the most threatened vertebrates on the planet.”
Questions to consider:
1. Why is there so much money to make in shark fishing?
2. How does Indonesian government try to keep sharks?
3. How are you going to protect the endangered fish if you were a government official?
