Saving Seafood

  • Home
  • News
    • Alerts
    • Conservation & Environment
    • Council Actions
    • Economic Impact
    • Enforcement
    • International & Trade
    • Law
    • Management & Regulation
    • Regulations
    • Nutrition
    • Opinion
    • Other News
    • Safety
    • Science
    • State and Local
  • News by Region
    • New England
    • Mid-Atlantic
    • South Atlantic
    • Gulf of Mexico
    • Pacific
    • North Pacific
    • Western Pacific
  • About
    • Contact Us
    • Fishing Terms Glossary

Oceana hopes shark study will help reduce bycatches

November 17, 2017 โ€” Between 63 million and 273m sharks are caught and killed every year, often as unintentional bycatch victims, the NGO Oceana said. But the conservation group hopes the use of technology demonstrated in a study released Thursday will help reduce that number, maybe leading to emergency hot spot fishing area closures or gear changes.

For more than three months in 2016, between June and September, Neil Hammerschlag, a professor at the University of Miami, and Austin Gallagher, a researcher at Beneath the Waves, another NGO, monitored the movements in the Atlantic Ocean โ€” from the New England to the North Carolina coasts โ€” of 10 blue sharks tagged with satellite tracking devices, according to an executive summary of the report.

Two of the sharks came in close proximity โ€” within one kilometerโ€“ of likely fishing activity on no less than four occasions, the researchers found when they overlaid their movements with that of the more than 60,000 vessels tracked by Global Fishing Watch.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Shark Fin Ban Is Misguided, Would Undermine Sustainable U.S. Shark Fisheries, Say Experts

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) โ€“ September 14, 2017 โ€“ A ban on shark fin sales in the United States would undermine some of the planetโ€™s most sustainable shark fisheries while harming global shark conservation efforts, according to two prominent shark scientists.

In a paper published this month in Marine Policy, Dr. David Shiffman, a Liber Ero Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., and Dr. Robert Hueter, Director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., call proposed Congressional legislation banning the sale or purchase of shark fins in the United States โ€œmisguided.โ€ Environmental group Oceana is pushing the legislation, known as the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act.

In an interview with Saving Seafood, Dr. Shiffman said the legislation was โ€œwell-intentionedโ€ but โ€œoverly simplistic.โ€ By withdrawing from the global shark fin market, the United States would remove incentives for its trading partners to build sustainable shark fisheries, and would eliminate an important example of sustainable shark fisheries management, he said.

โ€œWeโ€™re a relatively small percentage of the overall trade in shark fins, so banning the trade of shark fins within the U.S. will not have that much of a direct impact on shark mortality,โ€ Dr. Shiffman told Saving Seafood. โ€œBut weโ€™re a really high percentage of the sustainably caught, well-managed shark fishery. So removing us from the global marketplace for fins doesnโ€™t help save that many sharks, but it removes this sustainable fishery from the marketplace as a template that can be copied.โ€

According to Dr. Shiffman, U.S. shark fisheries are built on a strong mix of โ€œscientific research infrastructureโ€ and โ€œmanagement and enforcement infrastructure,โ€ which has helped make them some of the most sustainable in the world. His coauthor, Dr. Hueter, told Saving Seafood that enacting a shark fin ban would undermine decades of progress that went into building those sustainable fisheries.

โ€œWe have done a great job working together to rebuild the fish, and at least make the fisheries sustainable and profitable,โ€ Dr. Hueter said. โ€œAnd that is why this fin ban, in our opinion, is so misguided. Because after all these decades of work to get us to a great point with a bright future, this sort of ban would just cut the legs out from underneath the fishery. It would cause waste, put people out of business who are doing things right, and reward the folks in other nations who are not doing things well.โ€

Much of the public remains unaware of the sustainable status of most U.S. shark fisheries, a phenomenon the authors attribute to confusion over key issues related to shark conservation. In particular, many do not understand the difference between โ€œshark finningโ€ โ€“ the inhumane and illegal practice of removing a sharkโ€™s fins at sea โ€“ and sustainable landings of whole sharks required by U.S. law. Finning is โ€œjust this boogeyman of shark conservation activists,โ€ Dr. Shiffman said. โ€œPeople donโ€™t understand what shark finning means in many cases.โ€

โ€œWe have sounded the alarm now for 20 years or more about this thing called finning to the point where weโ€™ve gotten people so upset about it that they no longer listen to the subtle difference between finning and fishing,โ€ Dr. Hueter said. โ€œAnd they think that all sharks that are caught by commercial fishermen are finned animals.โ€

Should a total fin ban be enacted, rule-following U.S. fishermen would be economically harmed, the authors write in their paper, noting that nearly a quarter of the total value of shark meat sales comes from shark fins. Forcing fishermen to throw out fins from sustainably caught sharks would be wasteful, contradicting a United Nations plan of action to create โ€œfull useโ€ in global shark fisheries, they write.

Instead of a fin ban, Dr. Shiffman and Dr. Hueter support policies focused on sustainable shark fisheries management. Dr. Hueter recommended five ways fishery managers could pursue this goal: increase penalties for those caught finning sharks, which Florida did earlier this year; stop imports of shark products from countries that donโ€™t practice sustainable shark fishing; incentivize the domestic industry to process shark fins within the U.S. and provide for the domestic demand; closely monitor U.S. shark populations and support strict measures for sustainability; and increase public education about the problems facing global shark populations.

โ€œBanning is always the easiest thing,โ€ Dr. Hueter said. โ€œMaking the fishery so itโ€™s regulated and sustainable and smart, thatโ€™s hard. But we shouldnโ€™t be choosing things based on what sounds good or what feels good. We should be doing things based on what works.โ€

There is broad support in the scientific community for sustainable shark fisheries. In a recent survey of over 100 members of scientific research societies focusing on sharks and rays, Dr. Shiffman and Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, a marine ecologist at the University of Miami, found that 90 percent preferred sustainable management to a total ban on the sale of shark products. Dr. Shiffman believes that sustainable fisheries can go hand in hand with shark conservation.

โ€œI am glad to see that the best available data, over and over again, is showing that we can have healthy shark populations while still having sustainable, well-managed fisheries that employ fishermen and provide protein to the global marketplace,โ€ said Dr. Shiffman, who also writes for the marine science blog Southern Fried Science and frequently comments on shark conservation issues on Twitter. โ€œWe donโ€™t need to choose between the environment and jobs in this case if we do it correctly.โ€

Recent Headlines

  • Trump reinstating commercial fishing in northeast marine monument
  • Natural toxin in ocean results in restrictions on Pacific sardine fishing off South Coast
  • MAINE: Maine lobstermen remain mighty political force despite shrinking numbers
  • HAWAII: Ahi labeling bill waiting on governorโ€™s signature
  • Trump administration strikes hard at offshore wind
  • USDA awards USD 2.3 million in pollock contracts, seeks more bids on pollock, salmon
  • Trump to reopen Northeast Canyons to commercial fishing
  • US, China agree to 90-day pause on high tariffs

Most Popular Topics

Alaska Aquaculture ASMFC Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission BOEM California China Climate change Coronavirus COVID-19 Donald Trump groundfish Gulf of Maine Gulf of Mexico Hawaii Illegal fishing IUU fishing Lobster Maine Massachusetts Mid-Atlantic National Marine Fisheries Service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NEFMC New Bedford New England New England Fishery Management Council New Jersey New York NMFS NOAA NOAA Fisheries North Atlantic right whales North Carolina North Pacific offshore energy Offshore wind Pacific right whales Salmon South Atlantic Western Pacific Whales wind energy Wind Farms

Daily Updates & Alerts

Enter your email address to receive daily updates and alerts:
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Tweets by @savingseafood

Copyright ยฉ 2025 Saving Seafood ยท WordPress Web Design by Jessee Productions

Notifications