We fear sharks, but humans are the real predators – photo essay

On the end of a hook is a shark much larger than me. Its white belly gleams clean and sleek against the rusty hull of the ship as it is hauled out of the ocean, thrashing about trying to escape. They kill it by severing its spine with a knife.

For a generation, the film Jaws was the source of an irrational fear of sharks, which has probably made it harder for many to connect to their plight. People see it almost as a kill or be killed response. On the high seas, however, it’s clear who the real predators are.

Sharks are under attack all over the world. The statistics are grim: 100 million sharks are killed every year. Here I was, face to face with one of them, as it was hauled out of the water and cut to pieces.

In September, Greenpeace took its ship the Arctic Sunrise on to the high seas of the South Atlantic to expose the fishing vessels emptying our oceans and to draw attention to why we want a Global Ocean Treaty that can create huge sanctuaries free from this kind of pillaging.

Here, ships operate out of sight and out of mind: a system enabled by the fragmented governance of our global oceans – a space bigger than every continent combined but managed by a patchwork of regional bodies dominated by industrial fishing interests. It’s a peculiar system for the “blue planet”, almost half of which is covered by ocean beyond national borders that by rights belongs to us all.

Some vessels even hide from what little regulation there is by turning off satellite tracking systems, “going dark”. Some offload cargo to refrigerated ships (or “reefers”) allowing them to remain at sea for months at a time. This “transshipment” has been linked to some of the worst environmental and labour abuses.

Using innovative reconnaissance techniques, Greenpeace set out to find these ships and document the damage they are doing to our oceans.

We spent more than a month at sea between Senegal and the tip of South Africa, observing a dozen longliners in the South Atlantic. Longliners use a single long line that can extend 100 nautical miles and carry thousands of hooks.

The Atlantic longline fleet officially targets tuna and swordfish, but time and time again the bulk of their catch is sharks. Studies have shown that some fisheries are even catching tens of thousands of endangered sharks, such as shortfin mako, every year.

Most sharks don’t have the same protection as tuna or swordfish, and for every tuna or swordfish caught, we saw them hauling up around six sharks. These were primarily blue sharks, deemed “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

We saw one vessel hauling up a particularly large shark. The captain saw our cameras, and started motioning to the crew to cut the line. The shark swam free, hook in its mouth and line dragging behind. This left us wondering which species it was, and what its fate might have been if witnesses had not been there.

Another of the ships we intercepted, the Hung Yu 212, was previously investigated after a crew member was returned dead to his home, covered in bruises and with one of his eyes and his pancreas missing. No one was held accountable for his death, and I wondered if the crew we saw working the decks knew about this. When there are no repercussions, what’s to stop environmental or human rights abuses?

Demand for shark is a complex issue and the infamous shark fin soup is by no means the only threat. The global industry is now valued at up to $1bn (£0.8bn) with a growing demand for shark meat, as well as the use of shark in consumer products such as liver oils.

Back at sea, we saw another shark caught on the line about to be lifted to the ship. But something went wrong when the fisherman tried to slip a noose around its neck. The shark struggled, twisted its body and the hook came loose.

The fisherman missed his chance, but the shark didn’t. It darted away, and towards our small boat, before stopping right beside us. I could have touched its fin if I had dared. After a while, the shark regained its strength and dived under our boat, descending into the deep.

I saw so much killing, but it helps to remember the one that got away. Our oceans can recover if we only give them a chance.

Just a glimpse of these gruesome acts gave a sense of the scale of this industry and made clear to me that our system for looking after our oceans is entirely broken. We are utterly failing to protect marine life from the destructive practices of industrial fishing.

Millions of people worldwide are calling for governments to agree a strong Global Ocean Treaty when they meet at the UN in spring 2020. This would replace our weak ocean regulation and could pave the way for a network of ocean sanctuaries, off-limits to harmful human activity, which would properly protect marine life. It cannot wait. Longliners are out at sea now reeling in shark after shark, marking our countdown to protect the oceans.