|
In 1980 I was ten years old and my family went on vacation to Orlando,
Florida, to visit Sea World. While we were there, a new exhibit called
the Shark Encounter opened. The attraction consisted of a 60-foot, acrylic-windowed
tank through which ran a moving sidewalk, with sharks swimming all around.
I loved it. I repeatedly put my finger to the spankin’ new and nearly
streak-free acrylic hoping a shark would approach my hand. The interactivity
was great, but the glass between us made the sharks too removed for me.
I’d always been fascinated by these predators and wanted to know more
about them (especially when they’re on the other end of a rod and reel).
Within a couple of months of my visit to Sea World, I got the chance to
fish for sharks. I was hooked from the get-go, and I still fish for them
several weeks each year.
I’ve always tried to be a responsible angler; while on occasion
I’ve killed sharks for food, I have always stayed within the regulations.
And over the last several years, I’ve adopted the practice of tag-and-release
shark fishing on almost all trips. The tags are registered with the Apex
Predators Program (http://na.nefsc.noaa.gov/sharks)
out of Narragansett, Rhode Island. When I catch a shark, I insert a numbered
tag in it via a tag stick; record its length, approximate weight, and
sex; and send the data to the Apex researchers. If a tagged shark is caught,
the tag can be removed, and info about the shark’s movements and its rate
of growth can be calculated and used to help better manage the stocks.
Three summers ago I tagged a blue shark off Long Island, and last summer
he was caught off the Flemish Cap, nearly 800 miles from where I’d tagged
him. When my fish was recaptured, I was sent data about how much he had
grown and how far he had traveled from the date I released him. I also
learned that my fish had fallen victim to a longliner, and according to
a new study, he was just one of many sharks that have recently died on
longline hooks.
The study by Halifax, Nova Scotia’s, Dalhousie University suggests that
both coastal and oceanic sharks of the Northwest Atlantic from the Gulf
of Mexico to Canada are in rapid decline as a result of both targeted
and bycatch fishing. After two years of researching 15 years’ (1986 to
2001) worth of logbook data from the U.S. longlining fleet, which entailed
accounting for more than 100 million hooks and 200,000 sets, the Dalhousie
team concluded that scalloped hammerheads, great whites, and thresher
sharks are in the greatest danger, with a 75-percent declination rate
over the examined period. In addition, the mako, an ever-popular angler
target, was down by 50 percent.
One of the most eye-opening conclusions came from Julia Baum, a marine
ecologist who worked full time on the Dalhousie study. “ If we do something
[to protect the sharks], it will take decades [for it to make a difference],”
she says. “Secondly, there is no guarantee of recovery,” she explains,
noting how a ten-year moratorium on heavily pressured cod stocks in Canada
has produced less-than-impressive results. She adds that although U.S.
longliners were the focus of the study, recreational anglers (fishermen
like me) do factor into the decline of coastal sharks. To put it simply,
we’re losing the top of the oceanic food chain.
Next page >
Feeding Frenzy, Part 2 > Page 1, 2
|
