When older people on Madagascar’s west coast were children, there were so many sharks that they had to be a bit careful when playing in the water. At the time, local fishers would catch some sharks but had little reason to target them, given the low prices they fetched at market.
Then, in the 1980s, China’s rising middle class started eating more shark-fin soup, and fin prices skyrocketed. In Madagascar, as elsewhere, industrial vessels and local fishers alike began chasing sharks, and heavy exploitation has continued ever since. The results have been dire, local people say. Fishers in numerous towns and villages in southwest Madagascar told Mongabay that sizable sharks have become harder and harder to catch. The fishers said they now put in more work, with more selective gear, for less reward.
Nirina Arson Ranaivoarivony, who works at a western outpost of Madagascar’s fisheries ministry, has seen the changes firsthand. In the early 1990s, when he worked on an industrial shrimp trawler along the coast, he said there would be 3-to-4-meter (10-to-13-foot) sharks every time we brought the nets up. But by the time he left that line of work, in 2002, such large bycatch had become far less common. Now he keeps track of shark trade data for the region of Menabe as part of his work for the ministry. There are far fewer sharks being moved today because there just aren’t many left, he told Mongabay. They’ve all been taken out of the ocean.
In all that time, Madagascar has had no laws that specifically protect sharks. Now, the government may finally be set to take action. In June, the fisheries ministry teamed up with the environment ministry to announce a new national plan for the sustainable management of sharks and rays. The plan, which Mongabay reviewed in draft form, calls for a shark trade surveillance program, a crackdown on illegal industrial fishing, more no-take zones, and a concerted effort to collect better data.
Conservationists are cautiously optimistic about the initiative. [I]t is an important step towards the sustainable management and conservation of [sharks and rays], Nanie Ratsifandrihamanana, the international NGO WWF’s country director, told Mongabay in an email. However, it needs to be implemented and enforced, otherwise it will have little value. Madagascar has many such plans and strategies and many remain on the shelf unfortunately, so let’s hope this one will have a different fate.
On the edge of Madagascar’s western city of Morondava, tucked between the beach and the mangroves, is a strip of hotels, restaurants and bars, many teeming with tourists and sex workers. A passerby might not realize that beyond this strip, in the corner of the city, some of the world’s most hard-core fishermen live in simple houses built on the sand. Many of them are Vezo, a cultural group that lives off the sea. The Vezo people originally lived further south, but many have now migrated to Morondava and islands further north in search of better catch, or at least come this way now during certain seasons.
Sharks populations are declining for most species for which reliable data exist. Across the world, roughly 100 million sharks were killed per year between 2000 and 2010, an unsustainable rate according to a 2013 study in Marine Policy.
In theory, some shark species have international legal protection that is, trading them to or from any country, including Madagascar, is restricted due to multilateral and regional agreements. Madagascar is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Several shark species found in Madagascar’s waters have been added to CITES Appendix II in the last decade, which means that they can’t be exported without permits that establish their catch as legal and non-detrimental to the survival of the species.