A small crowd forms by a large wooden dhow docked at the Sharjah fish market, as half-a-dozen fishermen hoist up shark carcasses from the hull of the boat. One fisherman hooks them by the gills and throws them on deck, while another washes their bloodied bodies to prepare them for auction.
For fish traders and curious onlookers, it’s a captivating sight that signals the beginning of a competitive sale. Sharks like these can catch hefty prices.
Yet within the pile are two unusual species. Their elongated brown bodies, flattened heads and ray-like fins reveal them as wedgefish, one of the world’s most threatened marine species and illegal to catch in the United Arab Emirates.
The recorded scene was uploaded on YouTube in January this year and is part of a wider collection of footage documenting sharks and rays being illegally fished across the UAE despite a permanent federal ban.
Middle East Eye visited shark auctions and sourced videos uploaded on YouTube between 2018 and 2022 of fish markets across the UAE. Dozens of critically endangered species that are prohibited from being fished in Emirati waters are shown being landed in ports in at least four videos.
Shark researchers, both within the UAE and abroad, were asked to identify the species. They observed at least eight different shark and ray species whose conservation status ranged from near threatened to vulnerable or endangered and critically endangered, according to the Red List of Threatened Species maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Additionally, data from shark fin seizures in Hong Kong reveal two more critically endangered shark species being imported into the territory from the UAE between 2017 and 2019.
“Sharks are targeted across all spectrums of conservation status. For fishermen, as soon as there’s a shark on their line, regardless of whether they are endangered, they will keep it in almost all instances,” said Riaan van der Merwe, assistant professor at Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa University.
The waters of the Gulf are home to 32 shark species and 25 ray species. Of those, two out of five species are classified as endangered by the IUCN. As a marine resource, sharks are key to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems, yet many shark species continue to be fished to near extinction.
According to van der Merwe, a lack of proper law enforcement is impeding shark fisheries management and conservation efforts despite their ecological importance.