4.6 Article

Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fisheries Threatening Shark Conservation in African Waters Revealed from High Levels of Shark Mislabelling in Ghana

期刊

GENES
卷 12, 期 7, 页码 -

出版社

MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/genes12071002

关键词

DNA barcoding; mislabeling; seafood traceability; fisheries; elasmobranchs

资金

  1. Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [GLOBALHAKE PID2019-108347RB-I00]
  2. Principality of Asturias [GRUPIN IDI-2018-000201]

向作者/读者索取更多资源

The study revealed that a majority of shark products marketed in Ghana are mislabelled, with some endangered shark species being substituted. This highlights the need for Ghanaian authorities to improve control measures to enforce conservation efforts.
Mislabelling of fish and fish products has attracted much attention over the last decades, following public awareness of the practice of substituting high-value with low-value fish in markets, restaurants, and processed seafood. In some cases, mislabelling includes illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, contributing to overexploit substitute species that are undetectable when sold under wrong names. This is the first study of DNA barcoding to assess the level of mislabelling in fish marketed in Ghana, focusing on endangered shark species. Genetic identification was obtained from 650 base pair sequences within the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene. All except one of 17 shark fillets analysed were wrongly labelled as compared with none of 28 samples of small commercial pelagic fish and 14 commercial shark samples purchased in Europe. Several substitute shark species in Ghana are endangered (Carcharhinus signatus and Isurus oxyrinchus) and critically endangered (Squatina aculeata). Shark products commercialized in Europe (n = 14) did not reveal mislabelling, thus specific shark mislabelling cannot be generalized. Although based on a limited number of samples and fish markets, the results that reveal trade of endangered sharks in Ghana markets encourage Ghanaian authorities to improve controls to enforce conservation measures.

作者

我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。

评论

主要评分

4.6
评分不足

次要评分

新颖性
-
重要性
-
科学严谨性
-
评价这篇论文

推荐

暂无数据
暂无数据