MAKO SHARKS GET NEW INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION

Blue sharks like cooler water, and early August is far from the best time to catch them.  Thus, I was a little surprised when we were chumming of sharks south of Fire Island, and the fiah to show up was a blue.  That surprise was compounded when a second blue shark cruised under the boat as we were about to get ready to leave, and eventually swam away with a tag from the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program streaming behind its dorsal fin.

But on reflection, it wasn’t catching those blue sharks that made the day strange.  There was a lot of squid in the area, so many that they were cutting big chunks out of our deep baits, and squid seem to be the mainstay of blue sharks’ diet in this part of the world.  Even though blue sharks are most common in June, when they often swarm around the boat and anglers can catch and release 15, 20 or more in a day, there are usually one or two hanging around even through the dog days of summer.

We once caught a 10-footer on the last Saturday in July.

So what was really strange wasn’t the presence of blue sharks, but the absence of something else—shortfin makos.  

The place where we were fishing was traditionally a productive late summer/fall mako spot, where 3- and 4-mako days were more the rule than the exception.  The fish were usually small, with nothing over 150 pounds or so, but given that we were trying to catch fish to tag and study, not to take home, such little makos would have been welcome.

We always caught the occasional blue shark along with the makos, but makos usually outnumbered the blues by a ratio of three- or four-to-one.  So just catching blue sharks, and seeing no makos at all, inverted the natural order of things.

The local mako fishery has been in a downward trend for a few decades; in the 1980s, some fishermen would start looking for sharks around Memorial Day, and though they found very few that early in the season, one or two would often make their way into Long Island ports over the three-day weekend.  By the second weekend in June, quality makos—some in the 200 to 300 pound range, some even larger—could be expected to hit the scales.  Even in midsummer, when shark fishing slowed down, makos over 200 were regularly caught by boats running out of South Shore inlets.

Out in Montauk, of course, the fishing was even better.

Slowly, that began to change.  The season started heating up later in June, and ending a little sooner in the fall.  Although some big fish were taken—again, mostly at Montauk—the number of large fish caught in late July and August tapered off sharply.  

The Babylon Tuna Club’s Invitational Tournament was traditionally held on the last weekend in July; during the 1980s and early 1990s, the first-place mako often weighed between 250 and 400 pounds.  We took a 246 in 1997 that was only good for second place (although we pulled the hook on one about an hour before that jumped right next to the boat and was so large that, when the 246 came alongside, I was reluctant to gaff it because it looked so small by comparison).

But by the time the 21^st Century dawned, anglers often couldn’t find a mako that made the event’s 125-pound minimum weight.  Today, the tournament is o longer even held.

Of course, the North Atlantic is a very big place, and Long Island, by comparison, is very small.  It’s always a mistake to try to judge the health of a fish population by your personal experiences, or the abundance or absence in your local piece of ocean.  

However, in the case of makos, the decline in abundance was real. 

In 2017, a stock assessment conducted by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (which also manages “tuna like”—meaning highly migratory—fishes such as sharks and billfish) found that North Atlantic makos were overfished and experiencing significant overfishing.

According to the assessment, it would require a 75% reduction in fishing mortality just to halt the decline; if that reduction could be achieved, there would only be a 40% chance that the stock might recover in the next 20 years.  

Unfortunately, because shortfin makos have some real economic value, both as food and as a recreational species, some of the countries belonging to ICCAT, including the United States, refused to implement the total prohibition on landings that would be needed to rebuild the stock (because many makos caught in the pelagic longline and other commercial fisheries are dead when brought to the boat, it isn’t practical to maintain a retention fishery while reducing landings enough to rebuild the stock).  In the end, ICCAT settled for a 71-inch minimum size for male makos and an 83 inch minimum for females caught in the recreational fishery, while permitting pelagic longliners to retain any shortfin makos that are dead when brought alongside the boat.  All other makos, regardless of how caught, would have to be returned to the water.

The National Marine Fisheries Service originally adopted emergency regulations that set an 83-inch minimum size for all makos, and adopted ICCAT’s harvest restrictions, but eventually backed off when permanent regulations were put in place, adopting ICCAT’s recommended 71-inch male/83-inch female size limits. 

It was better than nothing, and as the U.S. accounts for a relatively small portion of the fishing mortality, not a big difference from what NMFS originally proposed.  But the North Atlantic stock of shortfin makos remains troubled.

A better picture of the stock’s health emerged earlier this year, when ICCAT released a 2019 update to the shortfin mako stock assessment.  The update used a somewhat different modeling approach, combining the projection results from two different computer runs, which assumed different stock/recruitment relationships.  The news was not good, for the assessment update revealed that

“regardless of the [total allowable catch] (including a [total allowable catch] of 0), the stock will continue to decline until 2035 before any biomass increases can occur; a [total allowable catch] of 500 tons has a 52% probability of rebuilding the stock levels above [the spawning stock fecundity needed to produce maximum sustainable yield] and below [the fishing mortality rate that will produce maximum sustainable yield] in 2070; to achieve a probability of at least 60% the realized [total allowable catch] would have to be 300 tons or less…All the rebuilding projections assume that the [total allowable catches] account for all sources of mortality—including dead discards.”

The mako shark stock is not in good shape.

It’s not at all certain that ICCAT will respond to that finding by placing further restrictions on any fishery, including the pelagic longline fishery that is causing most of the damage.  However, ICCAT isn’t the only body concerned with the health of the shortfin mako population.

In August, the nations that have signed on to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a pact usually referred to as “CITES,” considered a proposal by Mexico to list the shortfin mako on Appendix II of the treaty.  

While an Appendix II listing will not, in and of itself, restrict the harvest of shortfin mako in any way, it will require that shortfin makos exported to any other nation be accompanied by an export permit certifying that the fish were legally obtained, and that such export will not be detrimental to the survival of the species.  Every year, each party to CITES must submit an annual report that, among other things, lists the permits granted and the volume of each CITES-listed species affected.  Thus, the volume of international trade in shortfin makos could finally be known, allowing managers to craft more appropriate management measures.

More than fifty other nations signed on to Mexico’s proposal, the most nations that have backed any CITES listing proposal in the forty-six year history of the treaty.  Still, there were nations opposed to the Appendix II listing, including Japan, Canada and, somewhat embarrassingly, the United States. 

While Japan’s opposition to the listing was predictable, given that nation’s historic opposition to most restrictions on harvesting marine resources, the United States’ opposition was far more difficult to understand.  The ex-vessel value of all mako sharks landed in the U.S. commercial fishery in 2017 was less than $500,000, and given that most of the non-dogfish sharks caught by U.S. fishermen are retained for consumption within the United States, the economic impact of the CITES listing on U.S. fishermen is probably insignificant. 

One observer, who is actively engaged in shark conservation, noted that, in its closing remarks, the United States delegation said that they were acting on behalf of the President.   Given his apparent dislike of sharks, regardless of species, that may be as good an explanation as any.

But the good news is that, in this case, the U.S. came out on the short side of the vote.  The proposal to list makos on Appendix II received more than the required two-thirds majority, and the fish thus got just a modicum of international protection.

While that is hardly enough, in itself, to halt the species’ decline, it’s a step in the right direction. 

Now, anyone who has been awed by the sight of this magnificent animal alive in the ocean can only hope that ICCAT heeds the findings in the assessment update, and adds more protections of its own.