Endangered sawfish return to UAE waters

A sawfish at the Sydney Aquarium. The green sawfish was previously thought to be extinct from UAE waters but sightings posted on social media suggest otherwise. AP Photo

ABU DHABI // Dr Rima Jabado, a fisheries scientist at Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, asked a lot of people she met over the past year the same question: “Do you know what a sawfish looks like?”

Surprisingly, almost everyone she asked answered “yes”, despite the fish being on the brink of extinction for the better part of two decades.

“All sawfish are critically endangered, including the green sawfish, which swim in UAE waters. Most of the other species in their range are extinct but we have signs that, in the UAE, there is potentially a population,” she said.

The green sawfish, also known by its scientific name, pristis zijsron, was previously thought to be extinct from UAE waters but sightings posted on social media suggest otherwise.

“They are protected in our waters now, but recently on Instagram and Twitter people have been posting pictures of catching them, so as critically endangered species, we can’t have that happening,” she said.

Ironically, what makes the fish so well known, the iconic saw-like nose, is also a reason the species’ numbers are dwindling.

“The nose gets caught in fishing gear,” Dr Jabado said. “Also, coastal development has caused a decrease [in their population].”

Almost all the fishermen she interviewed knew of the species but said encounters with them in the past 20 years were rare.

“I started fishing when I was seven and we used to see a lot more of them,” said Saeed bin Salem, 70, a commercial fisherman from Abu Dhabi. “The water was clean and you’d see them but, like anything, it follows food and with coastal development we see a lot less now.”

According to older fishermen, the sawfish could be spotted in Dubai Creek and Musaffah, Abu Dhabi, so much so that Mr bin Salem caught one unintentionally off the Musaffah coast.

“Historically, the fish is used in four ways – for food, the fins, the meat and the liver, which we would boil down and use as a wood varnish,” he said.

Sawfish was not that sought after, he said, but if caught, fishermen were known to saw off the fins for sale to Chinese markets.

In the UAE the fish has been fully protected since 2008 and it is also on Cites, the international endangered animals and plants treaty, as an appendix one species, which means it is illegal to trade any sawfish items.

More recently sawfish were also added to the convention on migratory species, which means countries that are signatories are asked to develop conservation plans for them.

“We only started learning about sawfish when they started going extinct,” Dr Jabado said. “This is why we are pushing this, because if we do have a -viable population, we are trying to push to rehabilitate them.”

Dr Jabado said information gathered could be a starting point for conservation efforts.