Saving Seafood

MARYLAND: After 42 years of fishing, he’s never seen anything like this 310-pound bull shark

August 15, 2018 — In the picture, the bull shark towers over the Maryland fisherman.

Larry “Boo” Powley stares into the camera, seemingly unfazed.

The story of how the 65-year-old commercial fisherman came to pose with a 310-pound bull shark began Monday morning when Powley set out on the Patuxent River in Southern Maryland.

Powley, who has been on the water for 42 years, said he was planning to catch his usual crop of menhaden, a common fish often used in fish oils for humans and bait for blue crab. Menhaden measure 15 inches at most, so the 8.6-foot-long bull shark that got stuck in his trap off Cedar Point, in St. Mary’s County, around sunrise wasn’t hard to notice.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Why sharks are thriving near the North Carolina coast

August 15, 2018 — Climate change is negatively impacting our relationship with our state’s coast. Our famous beaches are taking a heavy hit from rising sea levels. Meanwhile, loss of property, loss of natural coastal habitats, and changes to our fisheries threaten our economic well being.

Sea levels are rising especially fast in the southeast, bringing potentially devastating losses to property values and real estate. Hurricane damage and chronic flooding due to rising seas a huge concerns. By 2045, more than 15,000 homes are at risk of being flooded on more than 26 days every year.

In addition to the property losses, so much sand is being eroded from beaches at Nag’s Head that the state spent $36 million to pump new sand from the sea floor onto beaches in 2014 and will spend $48 million in 2018. This brings total state spending on beach nourishment since 1990 to $640 million. The rising costs of beach nourishment impacts our state’s coastal tourism economy, which brought in an estimated $3 billion in 2013 according to N.C. Department of Commerce. With sea level predicted to rise at least 1 foot and by as many as 8 feet by 2100, there is much at risk.

Sea-level rise is not our only problem. Pamlico Sound had changed from an occasional feeding ground to a shark nursery as a direct result of climate change. Pamlico Sound already had many of the features of a good bull shark nursery: ocean access, proper salinity, and plenty of prey fish. The only missing piece was warmer water temperature. While adult bull sharks have been occasionally encountered in the sound for a long time, the sudden appearance and consistent presence of juveniles after 2011 signaled a change that has been correlated with rising water temperatures, particularly during late spring and early summer when bull sharks give birth.

Read the full story at The News & Observer

Bull Shark Nursery Grounds Shifting North, a Result of Climate Change

April 20, 2018 — The report published this week in Scientific Reports notes that while bull sharks have large migratory patterns and move quite a bit, they are very loyal to their nursery grounds.

Prior to this discovery, the most northerly known nurseries in the Atlantic were located off Florida’s east coast. In recent years, however, nurseries have been relocated north to the Pamlico Sound, which lies between the Outer Banks and North Carolina’s coast.

The discovery was a fluke, the researchers said.

While working to characterize shark habitat in North Carolina, the researchers from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, Simon Fraser University and East Carolina University found that a greater number of juvenile bull sharks, which remain at nursery grounds during their formative years, were reported in the brackish waters of Pamlico Sound.

Read the full story at the Weather Channel

 

Commercial Fisherman Reviews Shark Fishing Research

October 12, 2017 — Meet Mark Twinam of St. Petersburg, Florida, who fishes from Madeira Beach for large coastal sharks such as hammerhead, lemon and bull sharks in the Gulf of Mexico. He’s part of a group of fishermen who help NOAA research sharks in exchange for landing and selling a small quota of sandbar sharks. Twinam fishes from his 40-foot single-engine boat, the Captain Tate, named for his son, who he proudly says is getting a doctorate in economics although he fished with Twinam as a boy. “I pretty much cured him of fishing. He decided schoolwork wasn’t so bad.”

How did you get into shark fishing?

I started fishing after high school, went grouper fishing, then fished with longlines for tuna and swordfish. There was a bycatch (unintentional catch) of sharks, and we thought we’d like to sell them. We caught some sharks off Tampa Bay in the 1980s and that was around the time the government was encouraging fishermen to go shark fishing. I’ve been doing it off and on ever since.

How is the shark fishing business these days?

Practically nonexistent. The fishing effort today is not even five percent of what it was in the 1980s. The quotas are strict, not many people participate although we’re filling the quota. Then there’s the research fishery. These are the only fishermen allowed to land sandbar sharks. I’m involved with the research. We take an observer on our boat; they count sharks, measure them, and collect other biological information. We get paid by selling the sharks we catch.

What are the major challenges in the shark fishing business?

The biggest challenge is the propaganda from environmentalists who say that everyone in the world is cutting the fins off and throwing the sharks back alive. This is not what we’re doing in the U.S. We follow the law, land sharks with fins attached, and sell both meat and fins. This year, we’ve had a tremendous challenge because environmentalists persuaded the California Legislature to ban the buying, selling and trading of shark fins. California was our biggest market for fins and a connection to the Hong Kong market. Now the price, if you can sell them, has dropped from $32 per pound to $14.

Read the full interview at the Fishing Wire

Warming Waters Bring New Marine Species to NC, But Chase Away Some Familiar Ones

Bull sharks and lion fish are among the species becoming more common in North Carolina, while black sea bass and other fish are getting harder to find.

August 8, 2017 — A big reason reason North Carolina is seeing so much change in its marine species is because the state has an unusual variety of them, said Sara Mirabilio, a researcher and fisheries extension specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Near Cape Hatteras, the cold Labrador Current comes down from the Arctic, and the warm Gulf Stream flows up from the Gulf of Mexico.

“We are at the northernmost range for southern species and the southernmost range for northern species,” she said. “So climate change at the boundaries will show the most impact.”

In many ways climate change is unfolding as the slowest of slow-motion disasters. But fish can move quickly and for long distances when spurred by relatively small changes in water temperature.

Lately they have moved so quickly that fisheries regulations are lagging, and tensions are rising between commercial fishermen based where the fish used to be, and those where the fish have moved.

On a recent day, Mike Ireland’s 99-foot trawler “Sharon Nicole” was docked behind a seafood wholesaler in the Hobucken community east of New Bern, just off the Pamlico Sound.

Shrimp season was under way, but he and his crew were repairing one of the massive, powered winches that haul in their nets. It was an especially crucial one, because it reels in the small net they drag to locate fish.

“This is probably the most important tool on the boat,” Ireland said. “With this little sample net you can really pinpoint where they’re at.”

Read and listen to the full story at WUNC