Shark and ray fishing in the northwestern Mediterranean, a complex situation.

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea is home to a great diversity of sharks and rays, however, the knowledge of fishing for these species is ambiguous and there is a great gap in the northwestern Mediterranean. In this work, we detected that many species of sharks and rays appeared in the catch than those reported in fisheries statistics, several threatened with extinction, and thus a disappearance of species may be occurring without being properly reported. We found many species labeled with other generic names and changes in names from historical statistics may occur. On the other hand, we observed that the statistics could have a high degree of uncertainty, because some species are processed on board and the individuals arrive incompletely at the market. Finally, we detected that ray “finning” is taking place, which leads to problems in statistics and from an ethical point of view since individuals are processed alive on board. These problems may be occurring in other parts of the world and it is very important that studies be conducted to identify them to better manage elasmobranch populations.