The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has developed iSharkFin, software that allows the rapid identification of shark species based on their fins. The goal? Protect sharks threatened by overfishing and fight against the practice of shark finning , which is to cut up the wing and reject the body of the animal to the sea where it is dying slowly.
Designed for customs inspectors on fish markets, this software is easy to use. Especially that FAO has developed pursuant to tablet and smartphone. Just take a picture of the shark, download the software and write some characteristics of the shape of its fin. A few minutes later, iSharkFin indicates the shark species referred
An estimated 73 million sharks are killed each year by man. – A much higher number their reproductive capacity. The shark is indeed an animal struggling to procreate. Sexual maturity late and the particularly slow gestation
. The result: species are now threatened with extinction. This is the case of the oceanic white tip shark, three hammerhead sharks, porbeagle and manta rays. In 2013, all were added to the Annex to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Endangered Species (CITES) .-
But protection sharks remains particularly difficult, as the business is lucrative. In a report by the NGO Traffic published in 2013, the fin trade was estimated at more than $ 480 million in 2013 (approximately EUR 430 million).
By Olivier Liffran
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