4. Conservation and Management

4.1 Legal status

4.1.1 National

United Kingdom
The basking shark is fully protected from intentional capture or disturbance in British waters (to 12 miles offshore) under a 1998 listing on the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981), Schedule 5.

Isle of Man
The basking shark is protected within a radius of twelve miles around the Isle of Man (a UK Crown dependency). Despite protection here since 1990, numbers of basking sharks recorded around the Island in recent years have been falling (see Table 1 and Figure 1 in section 2.4).

Guernsey, Channel Islands
The basking shark is strictly protected under fisheries legislation around Guernsey (a UK Crown dependency).

Florida state waters, USA
The basking shark, which is on the southern edge of its range in Florida, is fully protected in State waters (out to the three mile limit on the east coast, and nine miles on the Gulf coast).

Atlantic and Gulf federal waters (3-200 miles), USA
The basking shark is strictly protected under the US Fishery Management Plan. Directed commercial fishing and landing or sale (either by commercial or recreational fishermen) of the species is prohibited. This prohibition recognises the biological vulnerability (limited reproductive potential and slow surface movements) of the species and was enacted in order to prevent targeted fisheries from developing.

New Zealand
The basking shark is one of several fish species (including some teleosts) which have received partial protection through fisheries legislation (the Fisheries Act 1983). Commercial target fishing for the species has been banned since 1991, although they are allowed to be taken as by-catch. The liver and fins are landed in this way, and the fins almost certainly all exported. Two main concerns led to this ban on target fishing basking sharks in NZ: their vulnerability (presumed low reproductive rate, growth rate and population size); and secondly the introduction of a Quota Management System (QMS) in 1986. The QMS restricted fishing on main commercial species and reduced some catches substantially. As a result fishermen showed a lot of interest and innovation in looking for and catching non-quota species. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries placed a prohibition on targeting species that were considered unlikely to support significant fisheries in order to prevent a surge in effort away from the quota species on to species for which there were no (or few) output and input controls, and no information on sustainable yields. (Malcolm Francis, pers. comm.)

4.1.2 International

Mediterranean
The Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea (1976) Protocol Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Biological Diversity in the Mediterranean was signed in Barcelona on 10 June 1995. The basking shark Cetorhinus maximus is listed on Annex II to the Protocol 'Endangered or Threatened Species’ and will therefore receive full protection in the Mediterranean once the Convention is ratified and appropriate legislation in place. (Species receiving a lesser degree of protection are listed under Annex III: 'Species whose Exploitation is Regulated’.)

The basking shark (Mediterranean population only) was also added to Appendix II (strictly protected species) of the Bern Convention on Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats in December 1997. This listing has an EU Reservation, pending progress on the management of other protected species already listed on European legislation.

4.2 Species management

4.2.1 Population monitoring

Very little monitoring of this species takes place, and none provides sufficiently good information to enable population trends to be determined with any reliability. Catches of basking sharks are recorded by some fisheries departments, including Norway, New Zealand (incidental catches) and, formerly, Scotland. However, most (if not all) other countries reporting on their elasmobranch landings do not differentiate between species of shark (only providing figures for total tonnage landed); weights of products rather than numbers of fish are reported; and little or no effort data are available. Even where catches are reported accurately, there are no catch per unit effort data available to enable fisheries yields to be extrapolated to provide overall population trends.

Three public sightings recording schemes for the species are presently underway in the UK. A national project run by the UK Marine Conservation Society has been collecting records since 1986 and includes a few records from Ireland. A regional project in south-west England and adjacent areas (Seaquest) also contributes to the Marine Conservation Society’s database. The Isle of Man basking shark project includes both an effort sightings scheme and a public sightings programme. The last of these also receives records from adjacent areas in England and Scotland (Watterson in lit.). Berrow & Heardman (1994) reported on a shorter-term project recording fishermen’s sightings around the Irish coast.

All sightings are heavily dependent on weather conditions and observer effort. Variation between years in numbers recorded cannot, therefore, reliably be attributed to changes in population size, and sharks a short distance below the surface will usually not be recorded. As noted in Table 1, section 2.4, effort sightings data from the Isle of Man have shown a steady decline in shark numbers since the late 1980s. The same trend is apparent in the data from the UK Marine Conservation Society public sightings recording programme for the whole of the UK (Figure 1).

Some useful data may be available from aerial surveys for cetaceans and turtles, as demonstrated by Owen (1984), but basking sharks have not been a sufficiently high priority for inclusion in such sightings programmes.

There is a need to obtain much more reliable population and distribution data for the species, including information on directed and incidental fisheries landings, population dynamics, reproductive biology, and migrations between wintering and summering grounds and pupping areas. The draft UK Biodiversity Action Plan (Anon., in press) for the basking shark proposes to address some of these points.

4.2.2 Habitat conservation

N/A.

4.2.3 Management measures

European Quota
The only known fisheries management for this species followed the establishment of 200 miles fishery limits around European Community countries (including the UK and Ireland) in the 1970s. An annual quota for the Norwegian catch of the species in EC waters was first agreed in 1978, as part of a quota exchange for white fish in Norwegian waters. The basking shark quota stood at 800 tonnes liver weight in 1982 and has since steadily been reduced, to 400 mt liver weight (approximately 800-1000 fish) in 1985, then 200 mt, and has been 100 mt (or about 200-300 sharks per year at an average weight of 0.4-0.5 mt oil per shark) since 1994.

FAO International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks
Management and monitoring of the basking shark and other species of sharks will be required in future under the International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks (IPOA-Sharks), agreed at an FAO inter-governmental meeting in Rome, October 1998. This document was endorsed by consensus at the FAO Committee on Fisheries meeting in February 1999, and will be submitted for adoption by the FAO Conference in November 1999. The objective of this FAO IPOA is to ensure the conservation and management of sharks and their long-term sustainable use. It notes that the current state of knowledge of sharks and shark fisheries practices causes problems in the conservation and management of sharks due to the lack of available catch, effort, landings and trade data. Inter alia, the IPOA requires States that adopt the Plan (it is voluntary) to identify and pay special attention, in particular, to vulnerable or threatened species, and facilitate the identification and reporting of species-specific biological and trade data. CITES presently offers the only established, effective means of monitoring international trade data at species level.

4.3 Control measures

4.3.1 International trade

None.

4.3.2 Domestic measures

None known.