Shark Fisheries in Argentina Revisited: 20 years later.

CHIARAMONTE, GUSTAVO ENRIQUE

Joao Pessoa

Conferencia; III Sharks International Conference; 2018

Since the publication of Shark Fisheries in Argentina (SFA) in 1998, several changes at a global, regional and local level, have impacted on the fishing activity of Argentina, and in particular on those fisheries that extract cartilaginous fish. Twenty years later I take ?sharks? in the sense that FAO has given to them for the action plans, involving all the cartilaginous fishes: sharks, rays and chimaeras. Through the data provided by the fishing authority of Argentina, it has been possible to analyse the processes of changes in the participation of the fleets that operate on the resource of cartilaginous fishes, and for some species it has been possible to have an indirect rude indicator of the changes in their abundance. The total number per year of fishing vessels by fleet stratum and fishing trips by fleet stratum was obtained (standardization was not possible due to the great heterogeneity of the data) and the effort unit was calculated as number of fishing trip per fishing vessels by stratum of fleet. Finally, for each chondrichthyans species or group of species, the BPUE as total landing biomass per unit of effort per fleet stratum by year was calculated. The sustained increase in the participation of the coastal fleet in landings was maintained, the ice trawlers fleet gained importance at the beginning of the decade 2000, while the freezer fleet progressively decreased its share in landings, intensified by the departure of longline vessels directed specifically to pelagic stingray. In the same year of the publication of SFA there was the extinction of the last fishery directed to a shark in the country, as a result of a macroeconomic situation that, combined with the abrupt drop in the catch yields of Galeorhinus galeus made this fishery unfeasible. Since then, other species have been gaining predominance in the landings of cartilaginous fish, changing the composition of them drastically. The fishing activity of the fleet directed to the so-called variado costero (vg multispecific fishing, coastal and ice trawlers) maintains a strong fishing pressure on other species of cartilaginous fish, such as the unidentified batoids, the angel sharks, and the gatuzo, Mustelus schmitti that already shows clear signs of overfishing.