Shark Culling Affect The Economy

How shark culling affects the Economy

Fishermen can make very large amounts of money in the illegal shark fin trade, even the legal shark fin industry is very profitable.

Many industries are directly involved in the shark meat and shark fin industry, they depend on the demand for shark products like soup, bags, shark meat and trophies to make a living.

Fishermen involved in the illegal shark trade can stand to make over 200$ for one fin off a shark (untaxed) through the underground shark trade. Fishermen who legally bring the fins in are subject to taxation and fishing quotas and are unable to profit as much. In Hong Kong there is an 18% tax on the selling of shark fins which generates large amounts of revenue for the economy.

There are some

(Oceana)

In Australia with the Shark preventive measures do not necessarily make people feel more safe or more likely to take beach trips, therefore the presence of these measures to not have a significant effect on the tourism revenue in the coastal areas. (ABC)

Adversely the presence of sharks in Australia boosts the tourism revenue due to tourist wanting to do shark dives or tours and the shark ban makes it much more difficult to spot the sharks because their populations are so affected.

Because of this many dive shops and boat companies greatly opposed the shark preventive measure, the increased media coverage biased negatively towards sharks and the active reduction of the shark species make tourist less likely to come and request shark related tours and more likely to focus on reefs or whales or rays.

How Shark Culling Affects the Environment

Sharks are a key contributor in eating species of fish that consume popular commercial food like scallops, clams and shrimp.

By killing the sharks the fish that typically consume human desired food are able to reproduce and consume much more of the desired food which places strain on the ecosystem and on the fishing

This is a problem because the shark species that are endangered or threatened are unable to repopulate. (Sharkwater)

Sharks are culled outside of meat and fin industries for sport fishing which can have a large environmental impact due to the fact that most of the fish hunted for sport are charismatic megafauna.

The great white is an example of this phenomena. Killing and sports fishing great whites is dangerous and in some places illegal yet the desire for shark heads, stuffed or mounted sharks and sharks teeth lead to the killing of the iconic animals.

This phenomena extends to the whale shark which is much less dangerous to hunt or fish but when killed can have a large impact because the sharks take so long to grow and are often killed at the peak of their sexual maturity leading to more difficulty in repopulation and causing affects in the food chain by lessening pressure on the whale sharks prey.

Culling Sharks can be helpful for other threatened species recover from fishing and predation pressure.

There are healthy and environmental initiatives such as catching and eating local sharks in effort to help prey fish species recover from overfishing and predation from