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  Yahoo News 2 May 07
Canada's basking sharks face extinction: committee

Canada's giant basking sharks face extinction because of government measures decades ago to stop them disrupting salmon fishing, an official committee on threatened species said on Tuesday.

"Up until 1970, there was a government sponsored program to eradicate these sharks because they were interfering with the net," Jeff Hutchings, president of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, told AFP.

He said the government fisheries department ran a program in which it "took boats and rammed into these sharks to kill them because these large fishes were interfering with salmon nets."

The toothless basking shark swims near the surface with its jaws wide open to swallow plankton and small fish. It is the biggest fish in the sea and can grow to the length of a bus.

Hutchinson estimated the decline in their numbers at more than 90 percent.

The trend threatens the species with extinction, compounded by the creature's extra long three-and-a-half year gestation period to produce young.

Salmon fishers in western Canada often used to find basking sharks caught in their nets, but only six of the huge creatures have turned up since 1996, he said.

"When the population collapses it's going to take a very long time to recover if they can at all," Hutchinson said. "If only six have been seen in the last decade there must be very few of them left in the Pacific Ocean."
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