The European Commission, presenting its first plan to limit all types of shark fishing, said yesterday that it had to act to stop several types of shark being pushed towards extinction...

Joe Borg, the EU Fisheries Commissioner, said: “The latest information we have confirms that human beings are now a far bigger threat to sharks than sharks ever were to us.”

He said that a surge in demand from Asia for shark fins for soup, and from the cosmetics industry for shark liver oil, had led to at least a third of shark species being overfished.
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The proposals are likely to lead to a tightening of the six-year EU ban on the practice of “finning”, in which fins are cut from a shark and the carcass thrown back into the sea. In future, vessels may be forced to land sharks with their fins attached and only remove them once ashore to enable tighter controls on the numbers caught.

The plan, which must be approved by EU governments and the European Parliament, would extend many of the features of the common fisheries policy to sharks, skates and rays, which have been largely unregulated. It follows moves by European governments last December to limit catches of two types of shark — spurdog and porbeagle — for the first time.

In the past two decades global catches of sharks have increased from 600,000 tonnes a year to more than 800,000. The EU fleet takes about 100,000 tonnes a year.

The reductions may also lead to far-reaching changes for Britain’s fishing fleet. Britain catches more deep-sea shark than any other European country, harvesting liver oil for cosmetics.

Spain is the largest exporter of shark fins to the seemingly insatiable Hong Kong market, while Italy is the main consumer of shark meat in Europe and its second biggest importer, according to a report by the international marine conservation organisation Oceana.