Shark conservation groups in Thailand are calling for greater marine protections and improved traceability in shark trade supply chains following a study that identified threatened shark species in products commonly sold in the country’s markets. The DNA-based study detected 15 shark species in products sampled from retail markets, restaurants, warehouses, seaports and fish landing sites around Thailand. More than half were species listed as threatened with extinction (vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered) on the IUCN Red List, including great hammerheads (Sphyrna mokarran), scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini) and sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus). The research team, comprising Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, wildlife advocacy group WildAid and Thailand-based researchers, published their findings last year in Conservation Genetics. In a new report highlighting the implications of the findings, WildAid points to shortcomings with traceability in the international shark fin trade and urges the public to say “no” to shark fin and other shark-derived products. “What we discovered was probably just the tip of an iceberg,” Petch Manopawitr, a conservation scientist and Thailand program adviser at WildAid, told Mongabay. Given the shark fin trade is notoriously opaque and difficult to monitor, Petch said there’s currently no means of reliably tracing where the sharks identified in the study came from, how they were caught, or by whom. What is clear, however, is that consumers of shark products, such as shark fin soup, are risking complicity in the demise of keystone species that could have knock-on consequences for the health of the world’s oceans. “To put it…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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