Shark and ray experts from around the world gathered last week at the Zoological Society of London to address the plight of the most threatened marine fishes in the world – the sawfishes. MORE

The disturbing discovery by a Phuket News reader of the selling of endangered hammerhead sharks in Kata market has been exasperated by the shocking realisation that the practice is not ‘technically’ illegal.

Gwyn Mills, CEO of Pattaya-based environmental organisation Dive Tribe, explained that the laws in Thailand regarding fishing practices are murky at best.

“It largely depends on where they’ve been caught... There are harsher penalties if they’ve been caught in a National Park as opposed to open waters for example.”

Environment officials from Costa Rica and Honduras on Thursday proposed protections for scalloped hammerhead sharks under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

“The time has come to regulate international trade of endangered hammerhead sharks,” said Ana Lorena Guevara, Costa Rica’s environment vice minister, while participating at a minister’s council of the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD) in Honduras from May 9-11.

Many shark populations have plummeted in the past three decades as a result of excessive harvesting – for their fins, as an incidental catch of fisheries targeting other species, and in recreational fisheries. This is particularly true for oceanic species. However, until now, a lack of data prevented scientists from properly quantifying the status of Pacific reef sharks at a large geographic scale.