recreational shark fishing – Southern Fried Science

Florida releases draft land-based shark fishing regulations

December 11, 2018December 13, 2018 David Shiffman 2 Comments

Uncategorized

After months of expert and public consultation, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has announced the draft text of new regulations that will govern land-based shark fishing. It’s mostly very good news that directly addresses most of our concerns!

A review of the problem
Land-based anglers in Florida (those who fish from beaches, docks, and piers) catch large numbers of threatened, protected species, handling them in needlessly cruel ways that likely result in mortality or permanent injury. Anglers are aware that what they’re doing causes harm to certain species and violates some existing regulations. Hammerhead sharks in particular are extremely physiologically vulnerable and need to be released much faster than they are currently being released or else they will very likely die.

(Learn more: see my paper on this subject, my blog post summarizing that paper, an open letter calling for action, an op-ed I wrote about this, a review of the existing rules and how they’re regularly violated, and a years-old blog post describing one problematic incident with land-based shark fishing)

An open letter to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on revising land-based recreational shark fishing regulations

April 17, 2018 David Shiffman

Conservation, Science

Note: The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is holding a public meeting on April 25th which will include the issue of land-based recreational shark fishing. Part of my dissertation research focused on this topic, so I am submitting expert testimony, but since I no longer live in Florida I am submitting it remotely. I am sharing my testimony here. Anyone else who is interested in attending the meeting in person (Fort Lauderdale Marriott on April 25th), or submitting testimony remotely, is free to quote my talking points below if the appropriate references are cited.

Dear Chair Rivard, Vice Chair Spottswood, Commissioner Kellam, Commissioner Lester, Commissioner Nicklaus, Commissioner Rood, and Commissioner Sole of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC),

My name is Dr. David Shiffman, and I studied land-based shark fishing in Florida as part of my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Miami’s Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. This research was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Fisheries Research (here’s a link to an open access copy) and covered in major media outlets including National Geographic, Nature, and the Miami Herald. Accordingly, I would like to provide expert testimony for your April 25th public hearing on this topic. Since I no longer reside in Florida I am submitting this testimony remotely. As a conservation biologist who spent years studying harmful practices among some elements of the land-based Florida shark fishing community, I am grateful to see FWC holding a public meeting that includes this important issue, and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

Overall, the scientific evidence is clear and overwhelming that while many anglers are rule-following and conservation-minded, many common land-based shark fishing practices represent a significant conservation threat to threatened, protected shark species in Florida. Additionally, the evidence is clear and overwhelming that in many cases anglers are breaking existing laws and regulations, and that in some of those cases the anglers are aware that they are breaking the law and are explicitly stating that they don’t care. Finally, the evidence is clear and overwhelming that many of the arguments put forward by land-based anglers in support of the status quo are not argued in good faith, and are intentionally crafted to misrepresent the facts of the situation.

It is obvious to me, and to many expert colleagues with whom I have discussed this issue, that the FWC can and must do more to protect threatened sharks, building off of early successes that made Florida a leader in shark conservation. Specifically, the FWC can and must do more to regulate these harmful practices, enforce clear violations of existing regulations, and educate anglers about these issues. Below I will elaborate on each of these points and propose specific regulatory, enforcement, and public education changes that can be made to protect sharks without significantly infringing on anyone’s rights. I will also counter several common arguments that are put forth by bad actors in the recreational angling community.

17 amazing and important things about sharks and rays that scientists discovered in 2017

December 22, 2017December 22, 2017 David Shiffman 1 Comment

Science

2017 was… yeah. Of all the years I’ve lived through, 2017 was definitely one of them. Anyway, some interesting things happened in the world of shark research. Here, in no particular order, are 17 amazing and important things that scientists discovered about sharks and rays over the last year.

1 Sharks can switch between sexual and asexual reproduction. We’ve known that several shark species can reproduce asexually for over a decade now, but this year, Dudgeon and friends showed an individual shark switching between sexual and asexual reproduction for the first time!

Noteworthy media coverage: CNN, National Geographic, Gizmodo

Background information on our land-based shark fishing paper

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 David Shiffman 5 Comments

Science

A photo used in this study showing a hammerhead shark taken completely out of the water. As with all photos used in this study, the angler’s privacy has been protecting by blurring out his face.

I have a new paper out on the conservation impacts of recreational shark fishing. The paper is called “fishing practices and representations of shark conservation issues among users of a land-based shark angling online forum,” and it is published in the journal Fisheries Research. If you don’t have institutional library access, you can read a copy of the paper here. The goal of this blog post is to provide background information on the study.

Journalists are free to quote or paraphrase information from this blog post. Additionally, I provide some suggested quotes below, and I am available for interviews about this paper (please contact me at WhySharksMatter at gmail).

37 things I learned about shark ecology and conservation for my dissertation

December 12, 2016August 24, 2017 David Shiffman 5 Comments

Conservation, Science

The fam attending my dissertation defense

After a little more than 5 years of hard work, I’ve officially completed my Ph.D.! You can read my dissertation (“An Integrative and Interdisciplinary Approach to Shark Conservation: Policy Solutions, Ecosystem Role, and Stakeholder Attitudes”) online here in its entirety.

In case there are some among you who don’t really want to read a 281 page dissertation but are curious about what I found, I’ve prepared this blog post to summarize my key conclusions. (Note: this does not include every conclusion. Some are aggregated together, and some more technical conclusions are omitted for this summary).

More large sharks were killed by recreational anglers than commercial fishermen in the U.S. last year

October 29, 2014October 29, 2014 David Shiffman 2 Comments

Conservation, Science

The United States National Marine Fisheries Service just released the 2013 “fisheries of the United States” report. The extremely detailed report contains lots of important information on both recreational and commercial fisheries in U.S. waters, and I recommend giving it a thorough read. I noticed an interesting detail about the U.S. shark fishery, though. In 2013, more large (non-dogfish) sharks were landed by U.S. recreational shark anglers (~4.5 million pounds) than by U.S. commercial shark fishermen (~3 million pounds). This was not the case in 2012.