A 10-fold rise in Marine Protected Areas has been recorded over a decade.

A report to a UN meeting on biodiversity in Hyderabad reports that more than 8.3 million sq km - 2.3% of the global ocean area - is now protected.

The percentage is small but the rapid growth in recent times leads to hope that the world will hit its target of 10% protected by 2020.

This would have looked most unlikely prospect just a few years ago.

The UAE should introduce tough new measures to protect threatened shark species, according to one of the organisers of a conservation conference taking place this week.

The Emirates took action in 2008 by banning the finning of live sharks at sea and outlawing shark fishing from January 1 to April 30 each year.

But Jonathan Ali Khan, a shark expert and wildlife filmmaker, said the UAE should take its policies one step further and ban imports and exports of shark fins and imports of whole sharks. He would also like to see the no-fishing period extended.

Sharks have a direct lineage to the Jurassic era, predating the dinosaurs. Despite existing for millions of years, it is questionable whether all of their types will see out the next 100. Global landings of sharks in the early 1950s were around 200,000 tons per year. By 2011 it was estimated that up to 73 million sharks were being captured by year.