(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-16 09:53

PARIS - The Mediterranean is "the most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays," the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said on Friday, in a report that said 42 percent of these species in this sea were threatened with extinction.

A visitor looks at sharks swimming in an aquarium. The Mediterranean is "the most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays," the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said on Friday, in a report that said 42 percent of these species in this sea were threatened with extinction. [Agencies]

Overfishing, including so-called by-catch -- when species are caught accidentally -- is the main causes of decline, it said.

The report looked at 71 Mediterranean species of sharks, rays and chimaeras, or cartilaginous fishes, which were assessed using the criteria of the IUCN's famous Red List of endangered species.

Thirty species are threatened with extinction, of which 13 are classified at the highest threat level of Critically Endangered.

Eight are classified as Endangered and nine as Vulnerable, another 13 species come into the Near Threatened category, while a lack of information led to 18 species being classified as Data Deficient. Only 10 species are considered to be of Least Concern.

No other region has such a percentage of endangered shark and ray species, the Swiss-based IUCN said.

It highlighted the plight of the Maltese skate (Leucoraja melitensis), which is found only in the Mediterranean, and whose population has plunged 80 percent because of bottom trawling.

The giant devil ray (Mobula mobular) has been decimated by illegal driftnetting. Females of this species can grow to five meters (17 feet) but give birth to only one pup per pregnancy -- a slow reproductive rate that leaves the species vulnerable when its numbers fall rapidly.

Just a single species among those assessed, a deep-sea shark called the Portuguese dogfish (Centroscymnus coelolepis), is doing relatively well.

The fish is found at depths of nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) and thus may be protected by a 2005 ban on fisheries below 1,000 meters (3,250 feet).

Eight species of sharks and rays in the Mediterranean have been listed in international conservation conventions as endangered, but only three of them get any degree of protection.

They are white and basking sharks, which are protected in Croatian and European Union (EU) waters, while Malta and Croatia protect the giant devil ray.