August 1, 2019 — In a world so big, it may be unfathomable to think our human touch has reached every corner. Yet our mentality of overabundance has leeched and tainted even the remotest parts of our oceans. In a ground-breaking Nature report, a team of more than 150 scientists have come together to showcase just how our major high seas fishing activities impact sharks.
There are over 500 species of shark worldwide and many large ones call the open ocean home. While it may be hard for them to find food in this vast blue desert, our technology has made it so we can find large quantities of it in very little time. Fishing fleets are the biggest threat to all sharks, but especially large ones as they account for over half of all identified shark catch globally in target fisheries or as bycatch. This unsustainable trend has paved the way for declines in some population numbers, like the regional declines in abundance of shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus). While scientists knew that sharks and fishing fleets shared the same areas, they didn’t know just how much fishing takes place in areas where sharks aggregate. This was crucial evidence needed to fight for catch limits in the high seas, where there is currently little to no management or enforcement for sharks.