Catches of the four main species in the South China Sea-Japanese spanish mackarel, eel, and large and small yellow croaker- have fallen a devastating amount. China's prawn catch once reached 40,000 tons, but due to overfishing, recent surveys show they are reaching an annual 7,000 tons. China is underreporting its overseas fishing catch by a great magnitude, and this is detrimentally hurting its economy11.
The whale shark is the biggest fish and shark in the world. Nicknamed 'gentle giants,' whale sharks are important to marine ecosystems as filter feeders and eat plankton. Although it is illegal to kill whale sharks, a factory in the town of Pu Qi in Southeastern China has been found to be capturing and killing 600 of them per year14. Between 1995 and 2008 a legal fishery in Taiwan killed approximately 800 whale sharks. That fishery went bankrupt six years later due to international pressure and lawsuits.
Whale sharks are valuable with a single whale shark carcass being worth $30,0006. The factory is also reportedly killing basking sharks and great white sharks and producing 200 tons of shark oil annually. All three species- whale, basking, and great white sharks- are protected under CITES Appendix II, which means they are not currently threatened with extinction, but are vulnerable to it if trade is not adamantly controlled8.
It is estimated that the factory is killing more than one thousand sharks in the coastal waters around China while the total population of whale sharks fluctuates in the in the thousands10.
These whale sharks are taken for their fins that are used in shark fin soup as well as for their oils and met. However, it is reported that shark finning, the practice of removing a shark's fin and discarding the rest of its body, has risen 400% over the last decade and a half19. It is estimated that "finning" claims 26-73 million sharks annually. Whale sharks are vital to ecotourism around the world, especially Indonesia and the Philippines, and are important to their natural environment. The economic gain from the carcass of a whale shark is worth far less than the potential income that could be generated by using this species as a sustainable tourist attraction.
Case study: whale sharks
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