Saving Seafood

NICK WHITNEY AND GREG SKOMAL: Facts, but no easy answers, around shark bites in New England

July 31, 2020 — A terrible tragedy took place in the waters off Maine this past Monday when a woman was fatally injured by a bite from a white shark. As shark scientists, we follow these incidents closely and try to learn whatever we can, but we fully realize that data and analyses are of little comfort to all those affected.

We also know that part of our job as scientists is to communicate the facts to the public as clearly as possible: This was the first-ever shark-related fatality in Maine’s history. There were only two fatalities from sharks in the world in 2019. Globally, shark bites on humans were lower than average in 2018 and 2019, and this trend appears to be continuing in 2020, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Given the number of people who enter the water every year, shark bites are rare (64 bites worldwide in 2019), and the vast majority of people who are bitten survive.

Those are the numbers, but other facts around shark attacks are much more difficult to assess: Why did this specific incident happen? What brought the shark so close to shore? What attracted it to the pair of swimmers? Why did it bite? The reality is that such incidents are so rare that the single biggest factor is probably chance.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: More seals means learning to live with sharks in New England

July 31, 2020 — Seals are thriving off the Northeast coast thanks to decades of protections, and that victory for wildlife has brought a consequence for humans — more encounters with sharks.

Seals are a favorite prey of large sharks such as the great white. The recent death of swimmer Julie Dimperio Holowach, who was killed by a great white off Harpswell, Maine, might have happened because the shark mistook her for a seal, authorities said.

Swimmers off the New England states have learned to be more mindful in recent years due to a spate of sightings of great whites, the apex predator made famous in the movie “Jaws.” A shark that killed a man off Cape Cod in 2018 was also believed to be a great white.

That was the first fatal shark attack in Massachusetts in more than eight decades, while the death of Holowach on Monday was the first documented fatal shark attack in Maine history.

“They’re not vindictive or mad or angry or preferring human flesh. They just occasionally make a mistake. And it’s tragic when they do,” said Greg Skomal, a shark specialist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “As we restore top predators, the potential for these interactions could increase.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Great white sharks have returned to New England

July 30, 2020 — Maine saw its first fatal shark attack in the state’s history Monday when a shark killed a 63-year-old New York woman off Bailey Island, Maine, northeast of Portland.

“Based on the information I have from the state of Maine, including photos of tooth fragments, this was definitely caused by a white shark attack,” says Greg Skomal, a leading Atlantic great white shark expert and senior scientist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. Maine officials invited Skomal to consult on the investigation into the attack.

The return of great white sharks to New England over the past two decades is both a conservation success story and an emerging public safety concern. Though it is extremely rare for a shark to attack—much less kill—a human, incidents are on the rise in New England. Since 2012, there have been five attacks in the region, all in Massachusetts. Only two have been fatal: Monday’s, and the death of a boogie boarder off Cape Cod in 2018. Before 2012, the most recent attack occurred in 1936. (Read about how Cape Cod has grappled with becoming a great white shark hotspot.)

It’s not known precisely how many great white sharks are in New England waters, but a tagging program Skomal started in 2009 suggests the number is growing steadily. Data from a five-year population study he launched in 2014 is still being processed, but he tagged a record-breaking 50 white sharks off Cape Cod in 2019.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Great whites attracted by plentiful seal populations in Maine waters

July 29, 2020 — Monday’s fatal shark attack off Harpswell is the result of rebounding great white shark and seal populations along the Maine coast, experts say.

The attack on Julie Dimperio Holowach, 63, was the first fatal shark attack in the state’s history. A diver was attacked off Eastport in 2010, according to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File, but he was not injured and fended off a porbeagle shark with his video camera.

Seal populations have grown since a 1972 law barred killing of marine mammals and white shark numbers have been rebounding for two decades as a result of a rule that said fishermen could no longer kill the fearsome predators, a shark expert based in Massachusetts said.

Gregory Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries dismissed speculation that warming water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine might be enticing more great whites to the state’s coastline.

He said the sharks always have been frequent visitors to Maine waters, but that growing seal populations might be drawing them closer to the shore. Seals are a favorite food of the great white, he said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Sharks are “functionally extinct” from many of the world’s reefs, new global survey finds

July 28, 2020 — Sharks are absent on many of the world’s coral reefs, suggesting that they are “too rare to fulfill their normal role in the ecosystem, and have become ‘functionally extinct,’” according to a new landmark study.

Conducted by Global FinPrint and published in the journal Nature, the study involved surveying 371 reefs in 58 countries. Sharks were not found on nearly 20 percent of reefs, “indicating a widespread decline that has gone undocumented on this scale until now,” Global FinPrint said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Shark fin stories by major media ‘misleading’: Q&A with David Shiffman

July 14, 2020 — If there’s one thing most of the public knows about shark conservation, it’s that they’re under siege by global fleets of vessels that scoop them up, cut off their fins and deposit them back into the ocean to drown, a cruel practice known as shark finning.

But what if that practice, while real, isn’t the singular threat it’s made out to be?

“There are many threats facing sharks, but one, which is not the biggest threat, gets the most attention,” says David Shiffman, a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University who studies shark conservation.

An analysis of ten years’ worth of media reports, published in June by Shiffman et al in the open-access journal iScience, shows that two-thirds of all articles about threats to sharks focused on finning and the trade in shark fins — two separate issues that are conflated so frequently, write the authors, that “it was impossible to tease these two threats apart.”

A more pressing threat, overfishing, was mentioned in just four of ten articles. Recreational fishing for sharks, which the authors call an emerging threat, only made it into a tenth of the articles.

Critically endangered sharks, meanwhile, got a tiny fraction of the attention of the better-known species, like great white sharks. They showed up just 20 times in nearly 2,000 articles.

The result of the skewed media coverage, Shiffman says, is that “a concerned citizen learning about this important issue from newspapers would be badly misinformed,” which could lead them to support policies that, at best, won’t work.

Mongabay reached Shiffman over email for an interview that’s been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Agreement Reached To Protect Dwindling Shark Species

July 2, 2020 — A threatened shark species is poised to see new protections against overfishing under a deal with federal officials, conservation groups and a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, according to Earthjustice.

More than 300,000 oceanic whitetip sharks have died as bycatch in commercial fishing nets off Hawaii and American Samoa since 2013, and the species is believed to have declined by as much as 95% since the mid-1990s, according to a release from the nonprofit law organization.

It’s been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — but it’s never been designated as “overfished,” the release stated.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Call for data and information – EFH Review for Pacific Coast Highly Migratory Species

July 1, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and the NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center have initiated a review of essential fish habitat (EFH) provisions in the Pacific Coast Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP).  This call for data and information is intended to support the review.

The HMS FMP, its EFH provisions, and maps can be found on the Council’s HMS webpage, under “Key Documents”.  The HMS FMP includes the following species:

  • Sharks: common thresher, shortfin mako, blue
  • Tunas: albacore, bigeye, Pacific bluefin, skipjack, yellowfin
  • Striped marlin
  • Broadbill swordfish
  • Dorado

Fishery management plans are required to identify and describe EFH for each life stage and species, identify and minimize impacts from fishing and non-fishing activities, and identify research needs, among other requirements.  A complete description of EFH provisions to be included in FMPs can be found in the EFH regulatory guidance at 50 CFR§600.815(a).  Information and data should be relevant to:

  • The habitat needs, associations and distribution FMP species listed above
  • Major prey items of species listed above
  • Adverse impacts on EFH from fishing activities and potential minimization measures
  • Adverse impacts on EFH from non-fishing activities and potential minimization measures
  • Research and information needs

Information and data sources can include published scientific literature, unpublished scientific reports, information from interested parties, and previously unavailable or inaccessible data.

Information relevant to the HMS EFH review should be submitted to Nicole Nasby-Lucas (nicole.nasby-lucas@noaa.gov) no later than Monday July 13th, 2020.  For further information, please contact Kerry Griffin (kerry.griffin@noaa.gov).

How media mistakes threaten global shark survival

June 19, 2020 — The following was released by Arizona State University:

Sharks are among the most threatened animals in the world, and more people than ever now want to help. But a deep analysis of news coverage of shark conservation issues over 10 years reveals an alarming pattern of inaccurate reporting. This misinformation results in broad misunderstandings of the true issues among both media consumers and policymakers.

David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist at Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, led a team that analyzed nearly 2,000 media articles dating back to 2008. The analysis reveals that worldwide media coverage of shark conservation topics is biased and inaccurate, omitting or misrepresenting key facts and not reporting on expert-backed solutions that have scientific data demonstrating their effectiveness.

“Sharks face many threats, and there are many available policy solutions to address those threats. However, you wouldn’t know that from reading newspaper coverage of this important and complex issue,” Shiffman said.

Examples of media misinformation include an overemphasis of threats, such as the shark fin trade verses the shark meat trade, which is a major and growing threat that’s less well understood. This skew in coverage has led in part to shark fin trade bans despite no evidence that these trade bans actually help sharks. The research notes that shark finning has been illegal in the United States since the 1990s, an important point that is often confused in media coverage of these issues.

Read the full release here