March 31, 2013 — Economically-speaking, sharks are worth more to society alive than they are dead, according to a new report in Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation.
While the deadly fish are prized for their fins as an exotic delicacy, an international team of researchers has found that the money brought in by shark-related ecotourism is expected to surpass the revenue made by catching and killing them over the next 20 years.
“The emerging shark tourism industry attracts nearly 600,000 shark watchers annually, directly supporting 10,000 jobs,” explained study co-author Andres Cisneros-Montemayor, a doctoral candidate with the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Economics Research Unit. “It is abundantly clear that leaving sharks in the ocean is worth much more than putting them on the menu.”
According to Cisneros-Montemayor and his colleagues from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur in Mexico, shark ecotourism currently generates over $314 million annually around the world and is expected to more than double to $780 million over the next two decades. Meanwhile, global shark fisheries currently generate $630 million, but that figure has been in decline for the past decade, the study said.
The joint research team examined shark-related fisheries and ecotourism data across 70 sites in 45 countries. They found that about $124 million in shark-related tourism dollars were generated annually in the Caribbean, providing more than 5,000 jobs. In Australia and New Zealand, shark ecotourism generated almost $40 million in tourism annually.
Read the full story at Red Orbit