NMFS RELEASES REVIEW OF ATLANTIC SHARK FISHERIES

 

Last month, the National Marine Fisheries Service released its Final Atlantic Shark Fishery Review, a comprehensive examination of the recreational and commercial shark fisheries of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

The review does not focus on the health of shark stocks, but on the overall fishery.  As the review itself notes,

“The purpose of the Atlantic shark fishery review (SHARE) document is to analyze trends within the commercial and recreational shark fisheries to identify main areas of success and concerns with conservation and management measures and find potential ways to improve management of the shark fishery…

“…the purpose of this document is to explore various aspects of the Atlantic shark fishery to improve stability and resiliency within the fisheries.  NOAA Fisheries addresses four objectives through this project:  review the current state of the Atlantic shark fishery; identify areas of success in the fishery; identify areas of concern in the fishery; and identify potential ways to improve the fishery and potential shark management actions or measures.  Based on the results of analyses in this document and public comments, NOAA Fisheries anticipates that there may be future management changes within the Atlantic shark fishery.”

To that end, the review documents a declining commercial shark fishery, and a recreational shark fishery that is going through significant changes.

With respect to the commercial shark fishery, it notes,

“data indicate that catch of available quota and participation in the commercial shark fishery have dramatically declined from historical levels.  In addition, NOAA Fisheries anticipates further declines in the future, due to adoption, in November 2022, of a proposal under CITES to list the entire family of requiem sharks and all hammerhead sharks in CITES Appendix II [which will require certain documentation, including a certification that the sharks were harvested sustainably, before any part of the fish may be traded on the international market]…”

With respect to the recreational fishery, the report states that

“data indicate increased shark fishing by state-waters and shore-based fishermen, along with an increased number of sharks being caught and released.  Directed trips targeting pelagic sharks and tournament landings have declined since shortfin mako shark limits were implemented, and are likely to decline further due to the current zero retention limit for shortfin mako sharks…”

The report also examines claims of increased shark depredation—that is, sharks stealing fishermen’s fish—in both commercial and recreational fisheries.

The decline in the commercial shark fishery is notable. 

Access to the shark fishery in federal waters has long been limited; in order to enter it, a fisherman must purchase a permit from someone exiting the fishery.  Even so, the number of active permits—defined by permits held by persons who landed at least one shark over the course of a year—declined sharply between 2014 and 2019, with active directed permits falling by 36% and active incidental permits dropping by 50%.

State-waters shark fisheries have shown a similar pattern, although the peaks and lows didn’t necessarily occur in 2014 and 2019.  In the Atlantic, the number of active state-waters permits peaked in 2016, had declined 30% by 2018, then rebounded slightly in the following year.  In the Gulf of Mexico, the number of active permits peaked in 2018, then dropped by 37% in 2019.  In both regions, the number of active permits in 2019 was well below 2014 levels.

Commercial landings dropped sharply as well.  Between 2014 and 2019, landings of Atlantic large coastal sharks fell by well over 50%, and never came close to the commercial quota, which remained constant throughout that time.  However, some other fisheries saw very different landings patterns; in the Atlantic small coastal shark fishery, for example, landings increased by roughly 50% between 2014 and 2019, and were on an upward trend.

From a value perspective, the commercial shark fishery is relatively small, with ex vessel sales of shark meat and fins totaling about $2.2 million in 2019.

The report noted that

“while NOAA Fisheries has successfully found ways to rebuild or prevent the decline in population of many shark species, the commercial shark fishery is in decline.  This decline is happening despite fishermen having available quotas for many species, and, in most regions, an open season year-round.”

It suggests that, to turn around that decline, NMFS might consider regulations that would change the existing commercial permit structure, perhaps converting the current limited-access incidental permit into an open-access permit; modify current vessel retention limits for various categories of shark; set quotas at the regional or sub-regional level (as has already occurred in the Gulf of Mexico); or authorize additional gear types.  It is possible that other changes to current regulations might also be adopted.

While such changes might well lead to some increase in commercial shark landings, and do so without causing harm to shark populations, one might still ask why the agency would choose to do so.

In the end, market demand for various fish products is going to have a big impact on the volume of landings.  In the case of some fisheries, consumer demand is high, and landings are limited only by quotas intended to ensure that removals don’t rise to unsustainable levels.  In other fisheries, landings are limited not by quotas, but by consumers’ demand.

For a very long time, canned Maine sardines—which were actually immature herring—were a popular and inexpensive food in the United States, supporting not only a fishing fleet, but more than 50 canneries.  Today, consumer demand for sardines has tanked.  Only one cannery remains in the entire state, and it has abandoned sardines’ traditional working-class image, instead promoting the fish as an upscale, all-natural, environmentally friendly product—a product that's sourced  from Latvia's, rather than Maine’s, coastal waters, because the local fishery disappeared along with the demand.

In the Mid-Atlantic region, commercial fishermen rarely come close to catching their entire scup quota, because if they did, the landings would overwhelm the markets, and much of the fish would remain unsold.  While there are hopes that consumer demand will increase, that has yet to happen.

There is even less domestic demand for shark meat.  It’s offered in some restaurants, and sold in some markets, but is few consumers’ first choice, at least in the eastern part of the country.  There is more demand overseas, particularly for shark fins, but its contribution to the nation's commercial fishing revenues remains small (in 2019, ex vessel values for some of the more popular fish such as black sea bass, striped bass, summer flounder, and haddock were $12.7 million, $15.8 million, $22.7 million, and $18.9 million, respectively); one must ask whether it makes sense for NMFS to go out of its way to support a small fishery for the various species of shark, or whether it ought to concentrate on providing adequate protection to the fish themselves, and allow consumer demand to determine the fishery’s fate.

On the recreational side, shark fishing is undergoing real change.

When I came into the fishery in the late 1970s, the emphasis, at least in the northeast, was on the shortfin mako, which was valued both for its fight and for its food value.  

Other species of sharks were caught, and their aggregate numbers exceeded those of the makos by a substantial margin; while many of those were released, the fishery also saw a lot of catch-and-kill, with sharks brought to the dock, weighed, and then dumped back into the ocean.  I well remember going to seminars given by a fisherman known for catching very large tiger sharks; part of his talk always included instructions on how to remove the sharks’ livers, which tended to float, before towing the fish out and dumping them in Great South Bay.

Because makos were the shark fisherman’s primary target, the recreational fishery was primarily a pelagic fishery, with most fishing taking place well beyond sight of shore.

Those things are all changing.

In the Atlantic coastal recreational fishery, most anglers catch sharks incidentally; only 19% of the trips on which sharks were caught were directed at coastal shark species.  93% of trips on which coastal sharks (that is, all sharks other than porbeagles, blues, makos, threshers, or oceanic white tips) were either caught or targeted occurred in state, rather than federal, waters; 55% of such trips involved anglers fishing from shore.  Much of the coastal shark fishery occurs in southern waters.

Coastal shark species are broken down into the large coastal shark and small coastal shark complexes, with the latter accounting for 52% of all recreational shark (including smooth dogfish) harvest; large coastal sharks only account for about 4% of total shark landings, but are a very visible part of the inshore shark fishery.  As the report notes,

“the recreational fishery for [large coastal sharks] attracts a substantial portion of media and stakeholder attention due to the growing popularity of the shore-based, trophy shark fishery that primarily targets these species.  While this fishery is overwhelmingly catch-and-release, it draws significant attention from environmental organizations due to its high visibility on social media, concerns over post-release mortality due to the improper handling of sharks in the surf, and the conservation status of many of the species involved.”

The latter is an important point, as in the northeast, the vast majority of the large coastal sharks caught from shore are sandbar, dusky, and sand tigers, species that may not be retained by anglers because they are either overfished or very vulnerable to fishing activities.  

Shorebound anglers, who frequently drag such sharks out of the water, pull them around by their tails, and even straddle such fish for photos, in which they bend back the sharks’ necks to unnatural angles in order to show off their teeth, certainly don’t do much good for already-troubled species.

Despite such issues, the release rate for large coastal sharks, other than blacktips, is very high, close to 98% of all the fish caught; bull and spinner sharks account for most of the landings.

The pelagic shark fishery is very different.  It is largely prosecuted in northeastern waters, and is a relatively small fishery; between 2014 and 2019, an average of only 7,720 directed trips were taken each year.  Shortfin makos were landed on 62% of all directed shark trips; it’s thus not surprising that, when increased size limits were placed on shortfin makos in 2018, the number of directed trips fell, dropping 33% between 2014 and 2019. 

It appears that some anglers who formerly targeted makos may have switched their attention to common threshers, as the percentage of trips targeting that species increased in both 2018 and 2019.  Absolute numbers of harvested fish also seem to be creeping up; NMFS' report observes that

“Common threshers are unique among sharks in the recreational fishery in that they may be the only commonly caught species that is more likely to be harvested than released, with harvested thresher sharks accounting for 60 percent of the total catch.  Harvest estimates from 2014 to 2016 were approximately double or more relative to estimated releases.  The number of thresher sharks released increased significantly between 2017 and 2019 while the number of harvested increased slightly after 2016.”

With all shortfin mako harvest now banned, pressure on threshers is very likely to increase.  The NMFS report has already documented a shift in that direction.

Despite the changes in the recreational shark fishery, the report contemplates fewer changes to recreational management measures than it does to commercial regulations.  Modifications to existing size and bag limits were mentioned, as were improved data reporting and enhanced data collection with respect to both catch and depredation events.

It would probably make sense to adopt more species-specific management measures.  We have already seen a ban on shortfin mako landings, and an increase in the minimum size for the major hammerhead species.  The next logical step would be an increased size limit for common threshers, to counteract the increased pressure such fish are experiencing as a result of the mako closure.  Right now, many of the threshers being caught are less than six feet long (fork length), and weigh under 200 pounds; raising the size limit from the current 54 inches (a length originally developed to suit the much smaller sandbar shark) to at least 72 inches would allow more opportunity for reproduction while also putting a brake on landings.

It would also make sense for NMFS to work with the states, to prevent the targeting, and post-catch mishandling, of protected shark species caught in state waters, particularly those caught from shore, where the likelihood of mishandling is greatest.

But right now, that’s all speculation.  We’ll probably see some proposed management measures emerge as the folks at NMFS digest the information in the report, and use it to inform regulatory actions.  Just what such measures might be will depend upon both managers’ inclination and stakeholder input; once they take form, they will undoubtedly go through a long scoping and public comment process before anything becomes final.

Whatever proposals eventually emerge, it’s good to know that NMFS cares enough about the Atlantic shark fisheries to perform a comprehensive review, and is willing to act when the data reveals that such action is called for.