We weren't disappointed. We were told that whale sharks were occasionally sighted in the lagoon and that at night tiger sharks came in from the deep to feed. In and around the two passes that gave the ocean access to the lagoon, grey reef sharks and silvertips gathered to wait for the food provided by the daily tidal rhythms. And offshore, where the bottom drops away into the abyss, the pelagic, or open-ocean, sharks reigned, guarding no territory, exercising rights to the entire ocean realm. The culprits in the slaughter are not hard to find.
Most observers think the true figure is at least twice as high.
A large percentage of catches go unreported. Bycatch doesn't count, so sharks killed in nets or on longlines meant to catch other animals aren't tallied. Illegal catches obviously aren't counted either. Fishermen who once released sharks caught on lines or trapped in nets now kill them for their fins. Small wonder that the worldwide harvest and export of shark fins doubled from 1980 to 1990.