Saving Seafood

Making Catch-And-Release Safer For Sharks

June 10, 2019 — Say the word “shark” to a New Englander these days and the mind jumps straight to great white sharks, which have seen a remarkable increase here in recent years.

But great whites aren’t the only sharks around. And it turns out we know little about many of the sharks that frequent New England’s waters.

Now there’s a new effort to understand how catch-and-release fishing of sandbar sharks impacts their survival.

“We want to know if the catch and release processes is harming the fish in any way, and if it is, we want to work with fishermen to try to figure out what is it about the capture event that is causing the sharks to die,” Jeff Kneebone told Living Lab Radio.

Kneebone is a fisheries scientist with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium and much of his research focuses on figuring out where sharks are and what they’re doing as they move around the region.

Twenty years ago, Sandbar sharks had a large population off the mid-Atlantic coast. When the population dropped, it became illegal to catch and keep them. But fishermen still are allowed to pursue them using catch-and-release fishing.

Given the sharks’ susceptibility to population declines, Kneebone wants to know more about what happens after they are caught and released. When they die, why?

“Is it how long they’re being fought? Is it how they’re being handled when they’re landed on the beach? Is it where they’re being hooked?” he said.

Read the full story at WCAI

Sharks killed in secretive Indonesian trade despite government efforts to protect some species

June 7, 2019 — There were only a few sharks for sale on the day the ABC was invited to the fish market in the north Japanese city of Indramayu.

“No-one breaks the rules here … when [the fishermen] catch sharks in their nets, they release them back to their habitats, if the sharks are still alive,” said the chief of the local fisheries cooperative, Darto.

However, the following day the ABC turned up unannounced and found evidence of a thriving shark industry, with workers cutting off hundreds of shark fins right there on the dock.

Walking over a carpet of shark carcasses, the auctioneer barked numbers rapid-fire into a megaphone, as a small pack of buyers crowded around him.

Among the dead animals at their feet, leaking blood from their gills, were endangered hammerhead sharks, with their heads carved into a point to hide their distinctive mallet-shaped snouts.

Further down the dock, juvenile sharks were being stacked like firewood into trucks, and taken away for export.

Read the full story at MSN News

Researchers to Begin New Study on White Shark Behavior

June 6, 2019 — The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries five-year white shark population study is nearing completion and scientists will begin a new wave of research off Cape Cod this summer.

Since 2014, research led by state marine biologist Dr. Greg Skomal has been conducted to get a more accurate picture of how many sharks spend their summers in waters off the Cape.

Results from the five-year study are expected to be released soon.

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, in collaboration with DMF, will start several projects that are focused on getting a better understanding of the predatory behavior of white sharks in the region.

“The big focus now is to get better information to inform public safety practices,” said Megan Winton, a staff scientist with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

“The best way we can do that at this point is to learn more about what these animals are doing in the waters off of the coast.”

The research conducted over the next five years will be a continuation of the previous population study.

“Now the focus is to really get as many tags on animals as we can to get a better idea of what the population is doing as a whole off of our coast,” Winton said.

Atlantic White Shark Conservancy CEO Cynthia Wigren said it is critical to get a better idea of hunting and feeding behavior from a public safety perspective.

“If sharks are feeding at certain times of the day or stages of the tide, for example, we can use that information to identify periods when the risk of interactions between sharks and recreational water users may be highest,” Wigren said.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Sound barrier to chase seals, prevent shark attacks debated

May 29, 2019 — A Cape Cod company has proposed building a sonic barrier around the region’s beaches to chase away seals and prevent shark attacks.

Deep Blue LLC presented its idea Wednesday at a public meeting in Barnstable. It sparked a broader debate about addressing the region’s massive seal population.

The company envisions a system of underwater audio devices that will emit a sound unpleasant to seals.

Owners Willy Planinshek and Kevin McCarthy say that if the seals leave the area, the great white sharks that eat them will follow.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Seals on a comeback, attracting sharks

May 28, 2019 — Seals have rebounded to healthy numbers along Massachusetts’ shores after being nearly decimated by early settlers and a bounty that later wiped out tens of thousands of them, according to experts — and that is what is attracting sharks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates there are at least 27,000 gray seals and 75,000 harbor seals in U.S. waters during their breeding seasons.

“What we’re witnessing is a comeback to a really healthy marine environment,” said Kimberly Murray, seal program lead at NOAA Fisheries in Woods Hole.

The numbers are a stark contrast to the 1700s, when gray seals had been nearly wiped out during the first 100 years of New England settlement, said Tony LaCasse, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium in Boston.

By the late 1800s, the seals had rebounded, but conflicts with commercial fisheries and a desire for the seals’ meat and pelts led to a bounty on both gray and harbor seals from 1888 to 1962 in Massachusetts and Maine. During those years, as many as 135,000 seals were killed, Murray said.

“Seals were perceived as competitors to fisherman,” LaCasse said. “Fishermen would carry shotguns in their boats and shoot them on sight.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Why So Many Sharks Have Bird Feathers in Their Bellies

May 22, 2019 — Marcus Drymon wasn’t expecting a baby shark to barf up a ball of feathers onto his boat.

The shark’s presence wasn’t the weird bit: Drymon and his team of fisheries ecologists regularly assess fish populations along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, and every year, they’ll catch, weigh, tag, and release thousands of sharks. In 2010, they were doing just that for the meter-long tiger shark when it coughed up the feathers. “Being an ecologist, I scooped them up and took them back to the lab,” Drymon says.

He passed the feathers to Kevin Feldheim, a molecular biologist at the Field Museum, who analyzed the DNA within them to work out what species they belonged to. The answer: a brown thrasher, a thrush-like songbird that lives in forests. What on Earth was it doing in the belly of an oceanic apex predator?

“I had expected a laughing gull or a brown pelican,” Drymon says. “The brown thrasher was the last bird I would have expected.”

Read the full story at The Atlantic

The Shark Attack That Changed Cape Cod Forever

May 15, 2019 — Last summer, Arthur Medici went surfing off the coast of Cape Cod. He never made it back alive. As the region’s shores increasingly become a hotbed for great white sharks, is it finally time to be afraid to go in the water, for real?

Isaac Rocha sat in class trying to concentrate on his schoolwork, but his mind was somewhere else. It was a Friday afternoon in mid-September 2018, and although the academic year had just begun, the 16-year-old Everett High School junior and novice bodyboard surfer was already longing for the weekend. Suddenly, his cell phone buzzed, and he quietly slid it out of his pocket, careful not to alert his teacher. The text screen lit up.

“Yo, what’s up?” it read. “What are you doing?”

Rocha smiled and quickly typed a reply: “I’m in school.”

Seconds later, his phone vibrated again.

“Yo, let’s go to Cape Cod. We’re gonna grab a hotel and go surfing. Go home and grab your stuff and be ready because I’m coming to your house.”

The message came from Arthur Medici, a 26-year-old college student from Brazil who attended Rocha’s church and had known him for years. When the final school bell rang, releasing students like a pack of greyhounds at the track, Rocha hopped onto his motorcycle and raced home. Just as he was gathering his board, wetsuit, and a fresh set of clothes, he heard a knock on the front door.

“Come on out!” Medici shouted excitedly.

Moments later, the two friends climbed into Medici’s black Nissan Altima and began the long trek to the outer edge of Cape Cod. Stuck in bumper-to-bumper Friday-afternoon traffic, they searched for Jack Johnson songs on the radio and caught up on the week, chatting about work, school, and life. Medici had recently asked Rocha’s sister, Emily, to marry him, and Rocha was thrilled his friend would soon become family.

Read the full story at Boston Magazine

Researchers push back against Hawaii shark protection bill

May 13, 2019 — Legislation meant to protect Hawaii’s shark population was altered at the 11th hour to remove the apex predators from the bill amid concerns from the scientific community.

The bill was intended to extend protections already in place for manta rays to include all rays and sharks, West Hawaii Today reported Tuesday.

It would have made it illegal to “capture, take, possess, abuse, or entangle any shark, whether alive or dead, or kill any shark, within state marine waters,” the measure said. There were exceptions for academic research, but the scientific community found them inadequate.

University of Hawaii shark researcher Kim Holland said researchers would be forced to apply for permits from Department of Land and Natural Resources personnel without scientific expertise.

“It will be virtually impossible to prove that someone is ‘knowingly’ fishing for sharks,” wrote Holland, adding state enforcement resources are already insufficient for current polices.

Holland also said the bill was too ambiguous in defining terms such as “take” and “harassment.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Star Advertiser

ASMFC Coastal Sharks Board Approves Changes to Recreational Measures for Atlantic Shortfin Mako

May 2, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Coastal Sharks Management Board approved changes to the recreational size limit for Atlantic shortfin mako sharks in state waters, specifically, a 71-inch straight line fork length (FL) for males and an 83-inch straight line FL for females. These measures are consistent with those required for federal highly migratory species (HMS) permit holders under HMS Amendment 11, which was implemented in response to the 2017 Atlantic shortfin mako stock assessment that found the resource is overfished and experiencing overfishing. Amendment 11 also responds to a recent determination by the International Commission on the Conservation Atlantic Tunas that all member countries need to reduce current shortfin mako landings by approximately 72-79% to prevent further declines in the population.

The Board adopted complementary size limits in state waters to provide consistency with federal measures as part of ongoing efforts to rebuild the resource. The states will implement the changes to the recreational minimum size limit for Atlantic shortfin mako by January 1, 2020.

For more information, please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, atkrootesmurdy@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740. Information on federal HMS shark regulations can be found at https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/atlantic-highly-migratory-species/atlantic-highly-migratory-species-fishery-compliance-guides

Game wardens, Coast Guard chase off illegal fishing boats

April 23, 2019 —  Texas game wardens and U.S. Coast Guard patrols chased eight “lanchas” fishing illegally in U.S. waters back into Mexico on Saturday, confiscating and removing 10 miles of illegal long-lines.

The Mexican fishermen were illegally setting long-lines in the Gulf of Mexico off Cameron County shores, and game wardens confiscated those and freed game fish including 40 sharks and king mackerel along with a single sea turtle.

Long-lining, which is banned in Texas waters, uses hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks attached to a single line. Texas waters stretch nine nautical miles from shore and, following a tip, the wardens and Coast Guard found the lanchas setting their lines a mile to a mile-and-a-half from shore in U.S. waters.

Game wardens found so many illegal long-lines had been set that they had to continue their mop-up operations Sunday.

Lanchas are speedy open boats favored by inshore fishermen and are usually 20 to 30 feet long and powered by outboard motors. The boats cross into U.S. waters and captains set long-lines and then head back to Mexican waters before returning five or six hours later to haul in their catch.

Read the full story at The Valley Morning Star