Spiny dogfish - renamed rock salmon for the fish and chip trade. Image © Creative Commons
In the UK fish and chips is an institution. We have other institutions too, of course, like the Royal family, and in Britain if you make it to your 100th birthday, the momentous occasion is marked by getting a telegram from the Queen.
But how would you feel if the fish in your fish and chips was eligible for such a telegram?
Because, it just might be.
No, I’m not talking about long-frozen fish fillets, but rather exploiting slow-growing, long-living species of fish, which frankly, can’t take it.
One such fish, which has been a regular feature of UK chip shops, is the spiny dogfish. That's a rather unpalatable name, so it was rebranded as 'rock salmon'. Spiny dogfish are actually small sharks, just a few feet in length, and they are one of the species up for discussion at the CITES meeting currently underway in Doha. Bluefin, elephants and polar bears may get the headlines, and spiny dogfish may even be overshadowed by their bigger shark cousins at this meeting, but they deserve a bit of our attention.
Globally shark populations are in dire trouble. An estimated 90% of big fish species have been fished out of our oceans in the past few decades and the sharks (and skates and rays) are more susceptible than most. They grow slowly, mature late, and have few babies. And yes, individual spiny dogfish have been known to live as long as 100 years! In short, they are very easy to overfish. And guess what? That’s exactly what we have done.
Spiny dogfish were once the most common shark on earth, but their numbers have crashed by a whopping 95%. As well as being fished for their meat, and their fins, they have also been turned into liver oil, fertiliser and pet food. They are fished around the world, in the US, Canada, Chile, Europe, and New Zealand… but mostly they are eaten in Europe. The Continental alarm bells have already been rung for spiny dogfish, and in for 2010 the EU fishing quota for the species has been slashed by 90% accordingly (the remaining 10% being a quota for bycatch). But on internationally-traded sp`ecies, there needs to be effective international control too which is why the EU and Palau want to have the species listed on CITES.
Increased protection for this species is urgently needed, and the governments at CITES now have a collective responsibility to do that.
In the meantime, do avoid having the rock salmon.
