Shark Words

As The Year of the Shark 2019 draws to a close, we look out across the planetary oceans to learn the plight of sharks, after a year of spreading the word about their desperately needed protection.  What we see is that sharks are being targeted by international factory fleets around the world who trail millions upon millions of baited hooks through their realm, trawl the sea floors for rays, skates and other bottom dwellers to 4000 metres, and slaughter them by the millions. Sharks are the only profitable prey remaining, now that ninety percent of the original (fish) fisheries are fished out.   Thanks to the shark fin trade, the shark has become one of the most valued animals, with the result that these top predators are being targeted even by fleets that used to toss them out as trash. Their meat is thrust onto the markets and sold by different names; there is such a surplus that it is being used in everything from dog food to make-up.  Further, ...

 A Fisherman’s Farce If you think that the shark fin trade is confined to Asia and a few dingy warehouses along the coast that are “somewhere else,” the fact is that all of the shark fisheries in the United States of America are part of the deadly trade. With The Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act , shark fishermen are pushing hard to make sure that they will continue to be able to profit from it and disseminating a large amount of propaganda about it that does not reflect the true facts. They claim that they fish sharks sustainably, so should not have to give up their lucrative profits. But the fact is that sustainable shark fishing is nothing but a fishermen’s farce. If history has taught us anything, it is that no animals can stand up to sustained, targeted, commercial killing—not whales, not turtles, not fish, and not sharks. Sharks have become so valuable due to the rising demand for their fins that intensive shark fishing spans all ocean...

With the loss of at least 90% of sharks worldwide, it would seem to be urgent to protect the ones that remain. Every global study of their status has reported a more dire situation than the last, and that the targeted hunt for the shark fin trade is responsible for their catastrophic depletion. Only one third of shark species are considered safe, and the most threatened are those accessible to fishing—those within about 1000 metres of the surface, or, for seafloor dwellers, 3000 metres in depth. Shark fins are among the most expensive seafood products. The total declared value of the world trade in shark products is close to US$1 billion per year and it is associated with much illegal activity, including murder. To supply it, intense shark fishing spans all oceans. Yet, as top predators, sharks have incalculable ecological importance and their removal has grave effects on the ecosystems where they live, as failures cascade down through the inter-tangled networks. Yet, shark...

With co-authors Dr. Brian W. Darvell and Professor Gilles Cuny, I recently published a paper in Marine Policy: Response to “A United States shark fin ban would undermine sustainable shark fisheries” D.S. Shiffman & R.E. Hueter, Marine Policy 85 (2017) 138–140 It showed that the authors had used incorrect figures in order to promote shark fishing in the USA in their paper and had also minimized the shark fin trade and the dangers of eliminating the oceans' top predators. The same authors reacted by publishing another paper which essentially said the same thing, except that it claimed to be a rebuttal of our paper, and made several incorrect statements about it — their paper was essentially a thinly veiled personal attack. Similarly, we became aware that those authors, who appear to be incapable of making any kind of intellectual argument, have been personally attacking us openly elsewhere on the Internet. So with my co-authors, I wrote a Letter to the Editor to make su...

Human stupidity is reaching new heights in the arguments put forth by American shark fisheries advocates in an effort to block  The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act of 2019. There are always scientists who are willing to speak up for industry and they, along with a variety of fisheries coalitions are  doing their best to keep it from becoming law. But their arguments amount to protesting that the ivory trade is good for elephants in the United States, or the trade in rhino horn is good for rhinos, in the United States.  This video debunks the main points raised by fisheries advocates. When shark fins bring in a fortune comparable to the drug trade, it is natural that these fishermen are going to fight and make up all sorts of stories to continue to get that money--it means so much to them. But The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act has determined that the amount of money that fishermen are losing is not enough to continue to perpetuate the monstrous shark fin ...

The Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act of 2017 was attacked by shark fisheries' advocates in a political opinion paper entitled,  “A United States shark fin ban would undermine sustainable shark fisheries.”   A new study, by shark ethologist Ila France Porcher, Dr. Brian W. Darvell of the University of Birmingham, and Professor Gilles Cuny, of the University of Lyon, demonstrates that the figures used in support of this claim were selectively chosen and misrepresented to support a pro-shark-fishing argument. The authors of the original paper, David Shiffman, of Simon Fraser University, and Robert Hueter, of Mote Laboratories, claimed that the United States is a small contributor to the shark fin trade. They stated that the Act was “misguided”, and argued that the United States of America should continue to participate in the shark fin trade, and that American shark fishermen should continue to profit from it, promoting the idea that banning the shark fin trade in ...

Long term study of the behaviour of individual sharks has shown that they are not just acting on instinct. Not only are they thinking and highly intelligent—they are conscious too. So as the Year of the Shark in 2019 begins , here is a review of how their actions reveal some of th eir mental states. Over a period of fifteen years, I searched out and observed the reef sharks on different islands in the South Pacific and for seven years studied the population of blackfins intensively as individuals. By recording their actions long-term, I was able to access a dimension of their lives that had not previously been documented. My records ultimately included 581 individuals and I could recognize 300 different sharks on sight. Shark science has studied these animals through fishing them, dissecting them, and tagging, never through long term underwater observation, even though this is the method, termed “ethology” used to study wild animals on land. I concluded that they were u...