They can't reproduce themselves out of trouble said Mr Speedie

"They can't reproduce themselves out of trouble," said Mr Speedie. The number of sightings decreased by 85 per cent between 1989 and 1996.So little is known about the shark, and so great is the concern for its fate, that the Wildlife Trusts and the Worldwide Fund for Nature have set up a group, called Seaquest, to monitor its numbers over the next three years."Killing the basking shark for its fins is as crass as killing tigers and rhinos for aphrodisiacs and medicines," said Colin Speedie, a marine naturalist and project director of Seaquest.The basking shark is particularly vulnerable to hunting because it reproduces infrequently and the young are slow to mature. The shark, cetorhinus maximus, is Cornwall's equivalent of the African rhino but far more mysterious. Weighing up to five tons, the creatures can be seen hurtling six feet above the sea, performing majestic half- somersaults. But this magnificent sight is becoming more rare.

An urgent assessment by water industry and toxicology experts established that the method outlined in the letters would not pose a threat to public health, the Cabinet Office said last night.. FOR CENTURIES, the basking shark has made a summer pilgrimage to Britain. Now it is facing extinction - the victim of foreign fishermen who slaughter it for its enormous dorsal fin, a delicacy in the Far East which can fetch up to pounds 20,000 a ton. A detailed document, outlining how the mass poisoning would be carried out, was with the letters.A news blackout was imposed in Britain and the Irish Republic as the operation began to track down the blackmailer.

Irish police confirmed the man, in his fifties, was held under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act at Mountjoy station in the north of the capital.The threatening letters, sent to Luciano Storero, the papal nuncio (representative), and Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador in Dublin, as well as the water industry regulator, Ofwat, in Birmingham, demanded a commitment to a "total British military and political withdrawal" from Northern Ireland by 16 June. Detectives swooped on an address in Dublin following a month-long investigation by a joint Scotland Yard and gardai team after three warning letters were sent to senior figures, including Tony Blair. The threat last month to conduct a "campaign of chemical warfare" by contaminating water supplies in England purported to come from a previously unknown terror organisation, the Republican Revenge Group.The man arrested, described by police as a maverick Irish republican, was detained under the Irish Republic's anti-terrorist legislation by the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. "This hits classical music people because they tend to write longer pieces.". IRISH POLICE were last night questioning a man who was allegedly behind a blackmail threat to poison the water system in England, writes Bridget Swindlehurst. The society hopes that its new charitable foundation, to be launched in January, will go some way to replacing the subsidy, of around pounds 1.4 million a year, which is due to end in 2003.David Bedford, a classical composer and PRS deputy chairman, said the foundation would not only give grants to composers but would also fund the performance of new works.But Mr Bedford, who also orchestrated Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, said the aim was to encourage all forms of music.Michael Berkeley, the composer and broadcaster, said the foundation would not tackle the main problem caused by axing the classical music subsidy.The PRS needed to look at other ways to help classical composers, such as amending a rule whereby the rates paid for broadcast music was the same regardless of the length of the piece."It's ridiculous that you get the same amount of money for a three-minute guitar piece as for a 20-minute symphony," Mr Berkeley said. Composers including Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Mark- Anthony Turnage condemned the society for axing the subsidy, which they said would cut the UK live-performance income of British composers by about 45 per cent. The PRS replied that subsidising a single musical form could not be defended, particularly as only 11 per cent of the money concerned went to living British composers. The PRS board agreed last week to set up a foundation to support new music, in response to critics angered at its decision last year to abolish a long-established subsidy of classical music.