This historic decision ensures that these sharks will have a fighting chance in the future

“This historic decision ensures that these sharks will have a fighting chance in the future.”Green groups at the conference openly paid tribute to the part the Government, and in particular Mr Morley, had played in securing the decision. But Elliot Morley, Britain’s Nature Protection minister, has spent much of the past few months actively lobbying other governments over shark protection and the European Union has been solidly behind the idea.When the proposals were initially put to the vote in Santiago on Wednesday they were defeated, but by the narrowest of margins, falling only two votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority.The British delegation then engaged in a further intensive lobbying exercise to try to switch the few countries necessary, and this was successful: when the votes were taken again yesterday they just passed, the basking shark by three votes and the whale shark by one.Conservationists were jubilant. But it does mean that the trade will be carefully regulated with a system of import and export permits, which is likely to curb illegal hunting, and may in itself provide valuable information on two creatures whose life cycles remain largely mysterious.The basking shark, which is found across the world, lives in moderate numbers off the west coast of Britain in the summer, and the proposal to control the trade came from London. Populations of both fish are thought to be in steep decline as a result.The agreement does not ban the trade in products of the two species outright, although it may very well be an initial step along that road.

“It’s a great day to be a shark,” said Callum Rankine of the conservation charity WWF.Besides their enormous size – the whale shark can be 60ft long and the basking shark 35ft – both fish are very vulnerable to exploitation, because they arrive at sexual maturity late and then reproduce only slowly.Filter-feeders on plankton rather than carnivores, “gentle giants of the sea”, they have been increasingly hunted for their huge dorsal fins, which can be more than 6ft high and are now greatly sought after in the Far East as signboards outside Chinese restaurants and as trophies in private homes.In recent years their value has soared and a single fin can now fetch more than £10,000. The world’s biggest fish, the whale shark and the basking shark, both threatened by demand for their enormous fins, were at last given much-needed protection yesterday after a long diplomatic wrangle in which Britain played a leading role.
Tough controls on the trade in both species were narrowly agreed at the meeting in Santiago, Chile, of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), after an initial vote in mid-week among the 150 countries attending the meeting had been lost.Cheers and applause greeted the decisions in the conference hall and conservationists expressed their delight. “I’m going to be scared that the knife won’t retract and I’m really going to kill him,” she tells the ENO’s magazine. He’d be advised not to refuse to wash up after breakfast – there might be an extra glint in her eye, come 9pm.Except that at the moment she seems to be more worried than her husband. She was so emotionally involved in the part that he feared that one night she really might stab him.What emotions might race through Peter Coleman-Wright, who plays the sinister chief-of- police, Scarpia, in the English National Opera production of Tosca next week? His assailant will be his wife, Cheryl Barker, in the title role. Next week, Freddie and the Dreamers?*When Tito Gobbi starred with Maria Callas in Zefirelli’s famous production of Tosca, he admitted he was genuinely afraid when Callas approached him with a knife in the murder scene. As well as a news story there was a large profile of Led Zep.

It was nicely nostalgic to read a profile of the old rockers. And, though the group’s representatives inform me that the band are not reforming and touring – and never were – I’m all for reading profiles of groups gone by. But did Bean play Romeo or did he have a non-speaking servant’s part? When was this production? Without any such details, the information is next to meaningless, and a waste of money.*The Sunday Times reported recently that the surviving members of the rock group Led Zeppelin were about to re-form and tour Britain next year. Virtually never do you get a proper mini-biography.Sir Richard Eyre has poured scorn on theatre programmes as poor value for money, saying: “To be asked to pay £3 to read in a programme that the leading actor started his career in Worthing and loves cats is to invite ridicule.” Mind you, I’d sooner have that sort of trivia than the lists of past productions that pass for biographies.At Macbeth in London’s West End this week I was curious to see what other stage work Sean Bean has been involved in. But programmes at other venues can be read in a few minutes or less. What I find most annoying are the actor “biographies”, which are usually just a long list of productions they have been in.