Saving Seafood

‘Why sharks matter’: Q&A with author and shark biologist David Shiffman

June 2, 2022 — In the introduction to his new book, conservation biologist David Shiffman quotes Senegalese forestry engineer and conservationist Baba Dioum: “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught,” Dioum says.

If anything is clear from Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator, it’s that Shiffman loves sharks (especially sandbar sharks, the subject of his master’s thesis). Just as clearly, he’s motivated to pass that enthusiastic affection along to his readers, drawing on the latest research to show how diverse, unique, misunderstood and just plain cool sharks are. As a writer, he delights in drilling into the vast variety of quirky behaviors and roles his study subjects play in the world’s oceans.

In doing so, Shiffman, currently a faculty research associate at Arizona State University in the U.S., is eager to spur readers into action aimed at protecting sharks. Still, the book is far from a generic laundry list of the troubles that we’ve brought upon these animals. He doesn’t sugarcoat the reality that many shark species face the threat of extinction as a result of the influence we humans wield over them and their marine environment. But Shiffman also holds a mirror up to how scientists, NGOs and shark aficionados approach conservation, and sometimes the reflection is less than flattering.

To support shark conservation, Shiffman writes, scientists need to ask the right questions, acknowledge their own blind spots and embrace the interdisciplinarity of modern-day conservation biology. Advocacy groups should follow the science that’s pointing the way toward addressing the greatest threat to sharks today, unsustainable fishing, rather than the topics that will attract the most donations. And members of the public can educate themselves about how they can best make a difference.

Read the full story at Mongabay

New ASU study identifies research priorities for threatened sharks

February 1, 2022 — Sharks are some of the most threatened animals on Earth, and while many scientists want to dedicate their research to helping to save sharks, many report that they don’t know how to do this effectively.

A new paper in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, led by Arizona State University Faculty Research Associate David Shiffman, has identified 35 research priorities that scientists can use to shape their research on threatened shark species in the United States.

“Lists of research priorities help scientists, especially early career scientists, to choose a research project that can have a real impact,” Shiffman said. “Instead of having to figure out the complexities of policymaking and management on your own to learn what information managers need, lists of research priorities give scientists a one-stop shop to easily find everything. These scientists know that a question they’re hoping to answer with their work is a research priority because it’s already been identified as one.”

To generate this list of research priorities, the team from ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences surveyed 86 experts from the fields of scientific research, environmental advocacy, natural resource and fisheries management, endangered species conservation and industry from throughout the United States. These experts were asked to reflect on what information we don’t currently know about threatened sharks that we need to know, and to propose research priorities as well as policy priorities.

Read the full story at Arizona State University News

Bait and Switch: Mislabeled Salmon, Shrimp Have Biggest Environmental Toll

January 14, 2021 — Seafood is the world’s most highly traded food commodity, by value, and the product is hard to track from source to market. Reports of seafood mislabeling have increased over the past decade, but few studies have considered the overall environmental effects of this deceptive practice.

A study by Arizona State University, the University of Washington and other institutions examined the impacts of seafood mislabeling on the marine environment, including population health, the effectiveness of fishery management, and marine habitats and ecosystems.

Read the full story at Seafood News

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

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

Sale of monkfish will pay for science to study them

March 20, 2020 — An Arizona university will be able to use about money generated from the sale of monkfish to study the monster-like sea creatures.

Monkfish are harvested as food off the East Coast, where they are brought to land in states such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine. The New England Fishery Management Council said a program called the “research set-aside” will allow Arizona State University to use new tagging technology to investigate the movements of the fish.

The university will collaborate with the New England Aquarium on the project, which is valued at about $4.2 million. The research set-aside program generates money for science from the harvest and sale of fish that are “set aside” for this purpose.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

To Save Endangered Sharks, You Sometimes Need to Kill a Few

January 9, 2020 — Sharks are some of the most fascinating, most misunderstood and most threatened animals in the world. Many scientists of my generation chose to study these amazing animals explicitly because they’re threatened, and because science can help; this was a major motivation for my choice to pursue a career as a marine conservation biologist, and a major influence in similar decisions by other shark researchers whom I surveyed. As we progress through our education, some of us are surprised to learn that effectively protecting entire species of sharks sometimes requires killing individual sharks—and many non-expert shark enthusiasts are outright shocked to learn this.

Every once in a while, this conflict between the goals of animal welfare and the goals of species-level conservation spill out into the world of social media, when non-expert shark enthusiasts discover that sometimes scientists work with fishermen to gather research samples from the sharks those fishermen have (legally) killed. This happened again recently, when just such a partnership was criticized on twitter by some non-experts.

The truth behind this ‘controversy’ is simple: many of the most important types of scientific data that we need to effectively monitor and conserve shark populations require lethal sampling. To quote a  2010 essay on this topic, “Although lethal sampling comes at a cost to a population, especially for threatened species, the conservation benefits from well‐designed studies provide essential data that cannot be collected currently in any other way.”

Nonlethal methods are being developed and should be encouraged (note: this paper about developing of nonlethal alternatives linked to above is co-written by my PhD supervisor and an Arizona State University colleague)., but they’re a long way from being ready for widespread deployment.

Read the full story at Scientific American

HAWAII: Report contends state’s nearshore fisheries undervalued, undermanaged

September 6, 2017 — KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii — Hawaii is neglecting a “hidden economy” by significantly undervaluing its nearshore fisheries both economically and culturally, according to a recently published report.

“Follow that fish: Uncovering the hidden blue economy in coral reef fisheries” was compiled by the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Conservation International, Center for Oceans. Researchers at Arizona State University also contributed to the report released in August.

The report states that because of the inherently “remote and dispersed” nature of nearshore fisheries, they have been studied more sparsely and thus are not understood as well as industrial fisheries.

According to the report, the economic benefits of nearshore fisheries around islands throughout the Pacific Ocean are often significantly underestimated. As a factor of gross domestic product, these fisheries are typically five times more valuable than their country’s recognize.

Researchers estimated the annual value of Hawaii’s nearshore fisheries at between $10.3-$16.4 million, adding they produce roughly 7.7 million meals per year.

Read the full story at West Hawaii Today