Greenland (Global Adventures): Researchers in Greenland are looking into whether or not one of the world’s largest species of sharks could be a source of bio-fuel for the native Inuit population. The Greenland shark causes problems for fishermen, with thousands of them dying in nets off of Greenland every year, the Ottawa Citizen Newspaper reports.

While the shark’s oily meat is toxic to humans, researchers at Greenland’s Arctic Technology Centre (ARTEK) believe it could be a useful source of biogas. Normally fishermen simply throw the shark carcasses back into the sea, but according to Marianne Willemoes Joergensen of ARTEK's branch at the Technical University of Denmark, meat from the up to seven meters long sharks could 'serve as biomass for bio-fuel production.'

“I think this is an alternative where we can use the thousands of tones of leftovers of products from the sea, including those of the numerous sharks,” so Willemoes Joergensen. She estimates that bio-fuels derived from sharks and other sea products could provide up to 13 percent of the energy used by the 2,450 residents of in the Inuit village of Uummannaq, the site of the pilot project.

The Greenland shark often accounts for more than half of the waste disposed of by the native fishermen. While the fishing industry claims the shark is abundant, experts from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Danish branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature disagree.

“We know very little about the Greenland shark, which lives in a limited geographic zone, the Arctic,” so Anne-Marie Bjerg, a specialist on ocean mammals at the WWF. She adds that the WWF does not think that the shark-based bio-fuel project “… is a good idea.”

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