When I was in my early teens, sandbar (“brown”) sharks were
abundant. Even up in the western corner
of Long Island Sound, where I lived at the time, late summer would see some big
female sandbars—fish pushing 7 feet and 200 pounds—cruising the shallow shorelines. Every now and then, a breathless angler would
retell the tale of the huge “striped bass” that picked up his bait and took
off, stripping every inch of line from his reel without ever stopping or
slowing down.
Once in a while, one of those big “bass” would get caught,
at which point anglers were confronted not with the world record fish of their
dreams, but with a much larger and toothier creature than they had expected.
A decade later, when I started fishing offshore, sandbars
had more or less disappeared from the western Sound, but they were still very
common in deeper water. It wasn’t at all
unusual to have one pick up a bait almost as soon as it was put over the
side. Most of those sandbars were small,
often just a quarter of the size—or less—of the sharks of my youth, but they
were always around.
We caught them when we went fishing for sharks, we caught
them when we chunked for inshore tuna, and we caught them when we were chumming
for blues. Late in the summer, when the
tuna were close or the bluefish were running, the sandbars were often joined,
and sometimes replaced, by dusky sharks, one of their close relatives. Most of the duskies were small, from three
feet or so to maybe 150 pounds, but every once in a while, usually when fishing
for cod on a deep-water ledge, we’d see one far larger.
And then, they disappeared.
I’m not sure just when that happened. Maybe late 1980s, or thereabouts. But whenever it was, there came a time, and a
realization, that we weren’t catching brown sharks anymore.
The drought lasted for a couple of decades. A
2006 stock assessment found that sandbar sharks were both overfished and
subject to overfishing. A rebuilding
plan was put in place, but because the species takes over a decade to mature,
and reproduces very slowly, that plan had only a 70% chance of rebuilding the
stock by the year 2070.
Dusky sharks were found to be in far worse shape than the
sandbars. A rebuilding plan was put in
place for them also. It had a 70% chance
of rebuilding the stock by 2400.
Yes, it would take 400 years.
The dusky shark fishery had to be completely shut
down. The recreational fishery for
sandbar sharks was shut down, too, as was the directed commercial fishery,
although a tightly-regulated commercial “research” fishery, with 100% observer
coverage, was allowed to continue. .
It didn’t take long for the effects of the new rules to be
felt up here on Long Island.
At first, sandbar sharks were still scarce. But on occasion each season, whether we were
fishing close to the beach or out past the 30-fathom line, a few would take our
baits.
Given how long the fish take to
mature, those few sandbars couldn’t have been
from increased reproduction. Instead,
they were most likely fish that were no longer killed by bottom longlines set
off Virginia and the Carolinas, and survive long enough to make their
way north.
Those first fish were all small, but in time, we started to
see some bigger ones, too. In 2015,
fishing out near the Coimbra wreck in early July, I hooked a shark that baffled
me with its fight. It was clearly a
decent-sized fish, able to pull line off a 50-pound standup at will. But the fight was all wrong for a mako or
thresher or blue, which is what we usually caught at that place
and time. As I finally brought the fish close to the surface, we were shocked to see that it was a big sandbar shark, a fish that ultimately
measured an honest 7 feet from the tip of its nose to the fork of its tail, and
weighed close to 200 pounds.
It was the biggest sandbar shark I had seen in decades, and suggested that management measures were beginning to work.
And last season, for the first time since
the late 1980s, I began running into swarms of smaller, four- and
five-foot sandbars, that were so abundant that they would take the baits just a few minutes, and sometimes just a few seconds, after they were put into the water.
It was a good thing to see.
So yes, even though the sandbars' recovery is still in its early stages, and I'll be dead for decades before they make it all the way back, they seem to be finally headed down the right road.
Yet, there are already some people complaining.
“have expressed frustration with the perceived impunity of
the actions of sharks in federal waters from North Carolina south to Florida,
and the desire to do something about it to protect their ability to do their
jobs to the best extent possible.”
One person apparently complained that
“As a diver, I see more sharks now than I’ve seen in 25 years
of diving. And it’s just because they
banned certain types of sharks.”
His observations, made off the South Atlantic coast, like my
increased encounters with sandbars off Long Island, is pretty good evidence
that the federal efforts to rebuild once-overfished shark population are bearing
some fruit.
But to some, that’s a problem, because a shark, just like you or me, or other
form animal you can think of, has to eat. And one of the things sharks tend to feed on
is fish.
Thus, one southeastern fisherman
complained that
“I have never seen sharks like we have now…it affects all the
other fisheries. And that’s just a
fact. If you walk in my shoes, you
realize that there is, it is, problematic.
You say ‘How can that be?’ Well,
I guarantee that if you hook a fish and there’s a shark chasing it, of a shark
trying to eat it, then you understand how it becomes rough…”
It’s not a surprising sentiment. If you spend much time around the
water, you’ll quickly find out that there are some folks out there who believe
that everything in the ocean belongs to them, and they harbor
deep resentment against any animal, person or government that might
stand in their way of taking all that they want.
But did anybody try looking at things
from the shark’s point of view?
Throughout the succeeding hundreds of
millions of years, sharks radiated into a myriad of species, most extinct, some
alive today. At the same time, Osteichthyes, the bony fishes, also came
into being, and radiated into a vast array of forms, ranging from the massive
bluefin tuna to tiny gobies, and from the pallid, hemoglobin-free Antarctic
icefish to the brightly-colored butterfly fish of tropical reefs.
All through that time, sharks posed no existential
threat to fish species.
They first evolved in Africa, and as far as anyone can
tell, just arrived on the South Atlantic coast within the last 15,000
years. Even then, humans weren’t
numerous enough to have much of an impact on the oceans, That only happened during the past few hundred years, well within the lifespans of some Greenland sharks living today.
But in those few hundred years, humans have managed to
overfish and deplete many of the species that sharks had fed on, in a
sustainable manner, for millennia.
And now, according to the
Brunswick Times, people are blaming the sharks for
disrupting fisheries. Taking such blame to its logical conclusion, a Florida seafood company representative suggested that
“This may be a good time for the [South Atlantic Fishery Management
Council] to start a discussion on how to promote the shark fishery…”
It is more than ironic.
If a humble mouse, or a tiny black ant, steals a
few bits of food from some person's pantry, a panoply of traps, toxins and baits
will likely be set to destroy the unwanted intruder. Yet fishermen feel free to loot the sharks’
pantry, and then suggest killing those sharks for merely try to claim a
share of their traditional diet.
“Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically
right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve
the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Sandbar sharks, and other protected shark species, are an
integral part of the marine ecosystem, and have been for hundreds of millions
of years. Restoring them to some
semblance of abundance is thus undoubtedly right.
Seeking to kill them because they may cause a few fishermen some passing inconvenience
is just as undoubtedly wrong.
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