Biologist Hopes To Dull Appetites For Man-Eaters For Marine Biologist, Andrew ChinSharks Are More Fascinating Than Fearsome

January 13, 2004

Release from:
Ian Frazer
Townsville Bulletin (Australia)

ANDREW Chin grew up in Singapore with an affection for sharks at odds with his father's yen for their marinated fins.

"I still remember the first time I saw a shark," he said last week. I was snorkelling off Tioman Island, Malaysia and a little blacktip reef shark swam by.

"My first instinct was `what an amazing animal'."

His fascination with the elasmobranch family of sea creatures, including sharks and rays, led to a career in marine biology in North Queensland.

Today he is an advocate for the management and conservation of the Great Barrier Reef's 123 recorded shark species, a field he says has been neglected partly because of the sharks' poor image.
Mr Chin, 29, a project manager with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, wants to better understand the impacts on sharks and reef ecosystems of a three-fold increase in sharks caught on the reef between 1994 and 2001.

The shark fishery in northern Australia yielded about 1700 tonnes of target species in 2000, valued at $9 million, CSIRO reports.

Sharks are under pressure around the world, with 100 million killed annually for their fins alone, according to a non-government organisation OceanNEvironment and Asian Geographic.
Mr Chin says there is insufficient information to know whether the increased catch on the reef is sustainable.

"Shark is traditionally a low-value product, so it hasn't attracted much funding," he said.
"With the attitude society has to the shark, their conservation has been a very hard sell.
"There is a belief that sharks aren't important animals, that they're dangerous pests we'd be better off without.

"Going into the psychology . . . there is an ingrained fear of being eaten alive by sharks. That fear overwhelms the reality of the risk.

"If you look at how many tourists visit the reef each day and calculated how many people are in the water and how many instances (of attacks) there are, it's a very minor risk."
"Sharks are fantastically designed to do what they do as apex predators.

"They don't have a lot of predators, but when you have human pressures their population can be reduced very quickly and take a long time to recover." The emergence of certain species as a tourist attraction could add weight to conservation arguments, but demand for shark fin was also increasing, with the growth of an affluent middle-class in China.

"Originally shark fin soup was the food of emperors," he said.
"It had high cultural significance. If you had it, it meant you were wealthy and influential. Now more people can afford it."

Mr Chin will study tropical shark conservation projects in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the United States next year, thanks to a $21,000 Churchill Fellowship.

He will return to Singapore to investigate a "Say No to Shark Fin Soup" campaign by a non-government group, Wild Aid, and Singapore underwater photographer and marine conservationist Tony Wu.
Their campaign appears to have had some successes despite a backlash against other conservation programs regarded as western-inspired "cultural imperialism".
Other projects on his itinerary are:

* An education campaign to protect whale sharks, run by Whaleshark Thai, in Thailand.

* Promotion of sustainable fisheries to benefit poor households, by the WorldFish Centre, Penang, Malaysia.

* Shark conservation and education programs run by the Ocean Conservancy, a non-government organisation based in Washington, US.

Mr Chin will also spend several weeks in Florida, including work with the Mote Marine Laboratory's Centre for Shark Research.

While in Florida, he will also spend time working with the Commercial Shark Fishery Observer Program and International Shark Attack File, part of the Florida Program for Shark Research based at University of Florida.

"In terms of thinking about sharks, working with the guys at Mote and the Florida Program for Shark Research will be fantastic, because of their long-term projects," he said.

"In a nutshell, the reason for going overseas is to see what other people are doing about shark conservation and management and have a look at how their communities are reacting," he said.
"Part of the project will be to get a better idea of why myths persist, why they are so under-valued and look at what Asians are doing, in education and community awareness."

"I want to see what works and doesn't and bring these lessons back home and see if we can apply them to the Great Barrier Reef."

He will collect information that will be made freely available to agencies such as GBRMPA, the CSIRO and Queensland Department of Primary Industries, so that it can be applied to the management and conservation of sharks and rays in Australian waters.

The CSIRO is working on new research projects that will provide valuable information to ensure the survival of shark, ray and sawfish species of northern Australia.

The three-year study will identify the species taken by fishers, assess the impact of fishing on species taken as bycatch in commercial fisheries, and identify those most in need of protection.

"The issue is bigger than GBRMPA, to have a truly sustainable shark fishery will take a commitment from everyone in the community, which is why education is so important," he said. Mr Chin thinks his generation could help the cause by giving up shark fin soup. "There tends to be a generation gap," he said. "The younger generation is much more aware of these issues, of conservation. Every now and then I see a positive piece in the newspaper that portrays sharks in a different light (but then) in time there is a shark attack which means intense media coverage and reinforces society's fears."