Cairo Magazine - Shark tale

Courtesy of HEPCA

Authorities recently fined a Hurghada fisherman LE100,000 for catching a tiger shark and barred him from fishing for six months. A patrol boat manned by Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA) and National Park authorities apprehended the fisherman at the popular dive site of Abu Ramada Shaa.

The captured tiger shark was a mother carrying 42 unborn pups. “If he had just waited 24 hours…” HEPCA Managing Director Amr Ali laments, shaking his head.

Tourists come in droves to see the sharks. In 2000, there was a significant decrease in the shark population in the Red Sea, caused by a new wave of commercial fishing to supply exporters hungry for shark meat and shark fins, considered delicacies in China. According to Greenpeace, an international environmental protection organization, an estimated 100 million sharks are killed illegally around the world each year.

“It’s a massive industry,” Ali says. “One fin is sold for a little more than LE11. The whole shark is sold for LE75.”

But kept alive, Ali says, the same sharks can generate revenues for the country that pale in comparison to the profit made by fishermen. At the Brother Islands, about 75 nautical miles south of Hurghada, an estimated 200 sharks roam the deep waters. This site is famous for its shark population, and people travel from around the world to dive with the reef dwellers. Ali says the Brother Islands bring in approximately LE360 million in tourism income every year. “You do the calculation and you will get to the number of how much every individual shark makes,” he says. “Reproducing is what gets you more sharks per year, not killing them. And these guys are selling them for LE75. Meat. Flesh. And I’m not getting into an environmental discussion. I’m just discussing this from the economic prospective.”

Shark fishing has been illegal since 1973, when Egypt became one of 100 countries to sign the Convention on International Trading of Endangered Species (CITES). Red Sea sharks were on the CITES’ list of endangered species, but since the local law that regulates fishing made no mention of sharks, fishermen could not be criminally prosecuted in Egypt. HEPCA had long lobbied for the law to be changed. Dr. Mahmoud Hanafy, the general supervisor of the National Parks of the Red Sea, joined him in his efforts. The lobbying paid off in August 2005, when Ezzat Awad, the head of the General Authority for the Development of Fishing Resources, issued a decree criminalizing shark fishing and trading in Egypt.