SHARKS face a grave risk of extinction because the ruling body on European fishing is attempting to weaken the restrictions on finning, conservationists say.

The Shark Alliance, which includes leading oceanographers and environmentalists, says that a third of the 130 species in Europe are on the threatened list and that another 20 per cent are in immediate danger of joining them.

“Sharks’ poor public image — we all remember Jaws — has led to their underprotection,” Sonja Fordham, the policy director of Shark Alliance, said. In British waters the angel, basking and soupfin sharks, along with skates and rays, are on the World Conservation Union Red List.

In a report published this week, the alliance says that the huge market for shark fins, which is getting bigger by 5 per cent every year, has led to increased fishing of the animals and the illegal practice of shark finning — the dumping of a shark’s body at sea after the removal of the fins.

At the Kai Mayfair restaurant in London shark fin soup is £108 a bowl and a single dorsal fin from a whale shark or a basking shark can fetch more than £10,000 in Hong Kong.

This week the European Parliament Committee on Fisheries called for a change in the law on shark fishing.

The law states that 5 per cent of the total shark meat caught can be fin. The committee wants to change this to 6.5 per cent, a move that would welcomed by Spanish fisheries, which have lobbied hard for the increase. This would effectively allow at least three sharks to be finned for every one landed.The alliance also says that loopholes in the law allow fishing boats to land fins and carcasses at separate ports, making the policing of finning difficult.

It claims that the reason the law is so weak is down to the influence of the fisheries committee.

“The EU finning regulation is already one of the weakest in the world,” Uta Bellion, of the alliance, said. “If the EU permits restrictions to be weakened, it will be a licence to fin and may well be actively copied by other nations and international bodies.” In the United States the percentage of fin allowed in shark catches is 2.5.

The report, titled Shark Alert, calls for more sustainable fishing practices to reverse the declining shark population.

Sharks are particularly vulnerable to overfishing as they grow slowly, mature late and produce few young. The spurdog, one of the British sharks at risk, only reproduces when it is 35 years old and has a gestation period of about two years. This means that sharks are regularly caught before they have the chance to reproduce.

Another problem cited in the report is that of bycatching — the accidental capture of sharks by those fishing for other species. European drift nets, used to target tuna and swordfish, are thought to capture more than 60,000 sharks each year. Long-line and bottom-trawling techniques are also responsible for high levels of bycatching.

The proposed changes will be voted on next month.

Sharks are among the oceans’ most threatened animals. Roughly 100 million sharks and closely related rays are killed each year in fisheries, either intentionally, sometimes solely for their fins, or incidentally as a bycatch.

In recognition of the pressing plight of sharks, in 1999 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation called on fishing nations to develop national and regional action plans to conserve sharks. The EU and its member states have yet to develop these critical plans or heed the scientific advice for most shark fisheries.

International limits on shark catching remain virtually non-existent. Official assessments of the status of sharks and rays, about a 1,000 species in total, classifies roughly one third of those in European waters as threatened.

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