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Shark fins, meat still delicacy in Jakarta
Shark fin and meat curing businesses are run with caution in Jakarta, where the price of a small bowl of shark fin soup can reach into the millions of rupiah following restrictions on the shark meat trade, as some species are now endangered
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span>Shark fin and meat curing businesses are run with caution in Jakarta, where the price of a small bowl of shark fin soup can reach into the millions of rupiah following restrictions on the shark meat trade, as some species are now
endangered.
One such businessperson is Luwih, 40, who runs a business specializing in shark and stingray meat near Muara Angke dock in Penjaringan, North Jakarta. However, she said she did not worry too much as long as she followed the guidelines on which shark species were allowed to be caught and processed.
“My business is safe as long as I process smaller sharks,” Luwih told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
She conceded that she had processed other kinds of sharks in the past, such as hammerhead sharks, which as of 2018 can only be traded in the domestic market. Now she does not cure hammerhead shark meat even though some of her customers still request it.
Following in her parents’ footsteps, Luwih started the business 17 ago and weekly cures around 3 tons of shark meat and fins, as well as 2 tons of stingray meat supplied by fishermen from outside Jakarta, such as Tegal in Central Java, Bali or Papua.
She then sells the dried products to various wholesalers in Bogor, Bandung or Cianjur in West Java for Rp 26,000 (US$1.85) to Rp 175,000 per kilogram, depending on the grade.
Curing shark meat typically took around five to six days, Luwih said, but some only took around two days.
For other fish curing businesses, shark meat is only an occasional product from the bycatch of fishermen in Jakarta Bay.
Hasanuddin, 40, said he did not specialize in shark meat and only bought it if it was available from Jakarta fishermen.
His business is smaller than Luwih’s, as it only cures around 2 tons of fish every three days. For shark meat, at a maximum he only processes 500 kg of small sharks, but rarely.
Shark meat is not as common as in the past, when almost all kinds of sharks could be sold on the market, Hasanuddin said.
The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry does not totally ban the trade of all shark meat, only curbing the sale of those deemed the most endangered.
Among the 117 species of sharks found in Indonesian waters, only whale sharks are fully protected, meaning that fishing for or consuming them is banned, while oceanic whitetip shark and three kinds of hammerhead sharks are allowed to be sold for domestic consumption but are banned for export, under Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministerial Regulation No. 5/2018.
Sharks on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) list may be exported under limited quotas.
Jakarta Food Security, Marine and Agriculture Agency fisheries department head Eny Suparyani said the agency mainly followed the central government’s regulation on shark fishing, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministerial Regulation No. 59/2014, as well as Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministerial Regulation No. 61/2018 on the list of fish protected by the CITES.
She said organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) had pressured the Jakarta administration to totally ban shark consumption, however, as it was under the ministry’s authority to do so, the agency had only “informed the public to not consume shark meat”.
According to the agency’s 2017 data, some 834.99 tons of shark meat entered Jakarta’s fish markets, showing a decline in recent years. In 2016, 863.32 tons of shark meat entered the city, down from 1,168.91 tons in 2015 and 1,989.19 tons in 2014.
Eny said he was sure that all shark meat found in Jakarta came from bycatch, so it was still possible for smaller sharks to be found in Jakarta’s markets.
WWF Indonesia’s bycatch and shark conservation coordinator Dwi Ariyoga Gautama said the government’s policy to limit the export of shark meat was okay, but that the government should also look at the conservation status of each shark species.
Citing data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 31 percent of shark and ray species faced the threat of extinction. “There are still a lot of shark species that are not yet banned, even though they are in danger of extinction. So, the export ban is not enough,” Dwi told the Post on Friday.
He said that Jakarta had become one of the biggest shark meat markets in the country, as the cost of possessing was relatively low, and that as consumers typically did not know what kind of shark they consumed, the demand for shark meat persisted.
He suggested that the city administration should control which species of shark were processed by fish curing businesses, such as in Muara Angke, where around 300 families depend on the industry.
