Is that really stupid? The effect of seals on fisheries is complex and not necessarily negative. Rich Press: This study looked at white sharks off the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States with the goal of estimating how the population has changed over time. Great whites, particularly the young ones, eat smaller sharks rather than seals as their main diet during large parts of the year, and Fallows says there has been a collapse in the populations of some of these shark species. But counting sharks is a complex challenge for a whole lot of reasons. Adults can weigh more than 2.5 tons, grow up to 20 feet long and have a lifespan of 70 years. The seals are snatching fish from nets (destroying them in the process); and both sharks and seals are snatching fish from lines. Earlier estimates had put the great white numbers in the low thousands. You have been listening to the NOAA Fisheries’ podcast, "On the Line". Since the 90s, they’ve made up some lost ground and are back up to about 70 percent of their historical level. Great white sharks are recovering, too. Great white sharks About great white sharks While the shark in Jaws was inspired by a great white shark in New Jersey, the legendary fish is far less fearsome in reality. Jose Castro: When we look where we have gone in the past, say, 30 or 40 years with the conservation of sharks, the trend is very positive. And large sharks are regularly caught accidentally as by-catch by trawlers and line fishing boats off the coast. Back in 2012, Fallows and his team witnessed 47 shark predations in False Bay in a single day. It’s been a gradual recovery over a 20-year period. Are gray seals “overpopulated” and “out of control”? What they really mostly eat are baitfish, especially sand lances. “So they can actually increase some populations.”. Our Conservation Efforts; Our Marine Biologists; The Dyer Island Conservation Trust; Jose Castro: The movie Jaws is probably one of the most influential movies in history. “Mostly they were victims of bycatch in expanding commercial longlines targeting tunas and swordfish but sharks as well.”. https://t.co/skg0wluagC pic.twitter.com/qy0Znnrr4e. Great White Sharks; Shark Facts; Did you know? A recent groundbreaking study of the Great White Shark population in South Africa by the Dyer Island Conservation Trust (DICT) indicates that the Great White Shark population may be 50% lower than was originally thought.. Be smarter than us. When the yellow fly line finally showed, a gray seal popped up 40 feet from my boat with the fish in his mouth. And those ups and downs were pretty dramatic. What’s definitely recovering, though, is the marine ecosystem. Unusual because everywhere these days, you hear about shark populations in decline. The presence of orcas, and the infamous Port and Starboard, in particular, has been put forward as another reason for the sharks disappearing from False Bay. Maine and Massachusetts even paid bounties on them from 1880 to 1962. Groundfish fishermen think they eat mostly groundfish. Any of them caught, whether inadvertently by commercial fishermen, or intentionally by sport fishermen, would have to be released. We can kill off bison to protect cattle from a disease suspected of being transferable , etc, etc. Tobey Curtis: And it takes them a long time to grow that size, and they only have a few young at a time, maybe a dozen pups, and that’s probably every two to three years. Sharks rip their prey into mouth-sized pieces which are swallowed whole. The lead author of that study, Tobey Curtis, is a shark scientist with NOAA's Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office. “It’s mind-blowing that people can’t identify that we have a species that is out of control here,” Chatham, Massachusetts commercial fisherman Nick Muto told WBUR radio. For 50 minutes we played give and take with 150 yards of green backing. There was a demand for shark fins at the other end. It was actually surprising that the aegis of protection that was extended to say marine mammals, or some of it was extended to sharks. Rich Press: Open season on sharks ended when shark fisheries were regulated for the first time in 1993. However, most are smaller; males measure 3.4 to 4.0 m (11 to 13 ft), and females measure 4.6 to 4.9 m (15 to 16 ft) on average. Please note that all comments are moderated and may take some time to appear. “My guess is that’s part of the perception. Rich Press: Also, the protections that white sharks enjoy are limited. More from Ted. Join us again next time for more stories about ocean life and ocean science. Whatever the reason, it’s incredibly sad to see these animals, which have ruled the underwater ecosystem for so long, being wiped out. They wear bells, carry bear spray and shout “Yogi” at bends on wooded trails. “A seal thinks ‘Ah, a free meal,’” declares Roman. Oregon Coast Aquarium’s director of animal care, Jim Burke, gives us the lowdown on these one-ton forces of nature. Whilst it’s not quite panic stations on the whale front, a recent survey of the population of southern right whales off the coast of Cape Town has shown the second-lowest incidence of the aquatic mammals in 24 years. Tobey Curtis: The news has been using terms like "surging" and "booming" and "exploding" shark populations, and it’s certainly not anything like that. Thanks for listening. The disappearance of the sharks has attracted plenty of international media attention, and now CNN is wading in. “The gray seals are healthy,” she replied. Be better. I put the question to the Northeast Atlantic Seal Research Consortium chair, Dr. Andrea Bogomolni. As an Orleans [Massachusetts] resident, I hate to see that ‘conserving’ sharks is more important than the interests of humans.”, Hoefer went on to assert that seals pollute beaches with their scat, infect humans with distemper and that: “If we continue to let the seal population, or should I say ‘poop’ulation, grow indefinitely, we won’t even be able to visit our own beaches… Again, food (or feces) for thought the next time you call a seal ‘cute.’”. Tweet your questions to @NOAA Fisheries with the hashtag #SharkChat, and he’ll do his best to answer your questions. And, at first, it set up a shark-killing frenzy. Back in 2012, Fallows and his team witnessed 47 shark predations in False Bay in a single day. Not one. Many people feel that with the decades that have gone into studying sharks and the technological advances we see broadly in the world around us, we should have no problem gaining a firm grasp of shark numbers. The last thing anyone who objects to seals should advocate is killing the predators that may one day limit them. He’ll be available to answer your questions in a live tweet chat on Thursday, August 14th from 6-7pm Eastern time. Then in 1997, white sharks became a prohibited species, along with whale sharks, basking sharks, dusky sharks, and a dozen or so other species. Rich Press: It’s Shark Week!...and so today we have an unusual story for you about sharks. Today we have two NOAA biologists on the line, including the lead author of that study, to talk with us about what drove the precipitous decline in white sharks a few decades ago, and what exactly is behind their recovery. You know there were shark fishing tournaments that had categories...you could get a prize for the most sharks killed. The several thousand gray seals hauled out on the beach looked like a rock jetty. Let us help you plan your dive. “Conservation efforts have been incredibly successful for seals,” says Dr. Joe Roman, a conservation biologist with the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont. We have the “right” to disrupt ecosystems by killing off wolves so we can graze our invasive cattle/sheep. That’s www.fisheries.noaa.gov/podcasts. […], I have always loved (sarcasm) how many people think that privileges are not the same as rights. According to a 2014 stud… Is the recolonization of gray seals helping with white shark recovery? Rich Press: It took a number of years for commercial relations to develop, but when they did, the trade in shark fins really took off. Seals eat dogfish, too. Andreotti and her colleagues believed that the number, back in 2012 when they collected they collected the data, was just a few hundred. We just kind of put it all together, and did the best we could to analyze it for distribution and abundance. Join us next time for a first-hand look at the people and the science behind managing our nation’s fisheries. “To maintain a population, you need more than 500,” says Andreotti. Or the shark … Rich Press: The recent study showed, and I should point out that there’s a lot of uncertainty around these numbers, that by the 90s, after two decades of unregulated over fishing, the white shark population had fallen to about 30 percent of what it was only a few decades before. Last year, ISAF investigated 140 alleged interactions between human and shark… Recovery: Smalltooth Sawfish Flickering Back, The Living Benefits of East Coast Dam Removal, Recovery: The Seal and Shark Invasion | Joe Roman. “The gray seal population on the beaches and shores of Cape Cod and the Islands is exploding, threatening the historical inshore fishing culture and economy of the region as well as the safety and sanitation of some of our most popular beaches,” it warns. I also propose that the fishing for and killing of sharks be encouraged. Roman offers this: “Certainly sharks are responding to a resource that’s been absent for a long time. For example, visitors in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks get that they enter grizzly country at their own risk. Tobey Curtis: So all sharks were fair game, no rules at all for shark fisheries until 1993. For more information, visit NOAA Fisheries at www.fisheries.noaa.gov. The great whites of False Bay have vanished. Book Now. It’s the OCEAN. It is notable for its size, with larger female individuals growing to 6.1 m (20 ft) in length and 1,905–2,268 kg (4,200–5,000 lb) in weight at maturity. So it was an incredible change of direction. There you’ll find a link to the paper on white sharks in the journal of PLOS ONE, and also a link to an award-winning paper by Jose Castro, one of the two scientists you just heard from. So apparently recovery is ongoing. Thank you for your insights, as insane and misguided as they are. Commercial fisherman can’t target white sharks, but white sharks do occasionally get caught up in fishing gear that was meant to target other species. “That’s misinformation,” says Bogomolni. Tobey Curtis: We started collecting the records in like the 1960s, and we’ve got records going back to the year 1800. As a final insult the seal dropped it. It really pains me to say it, but another part of the country where people demand automatic complete protection from all large predators is my own state of Iowa. The Conservancy also partners with Chatham Bars Inn to offer White Shark Expeditions from a smaller vessel chartered at $2,500 per trip. Tobey Curtis: The seal population off New England has recovered dramatically in the last 10 years or so, and that’s probably helped give the white sharks a little extra boost with reliable high quality prey source. A graph plotting the frequency of these attacks on Cape fur seals yields a predictable tailing off: One person who hasn’t been surprised by the disappearance of the apex predators is Stellenbosch University marine biologist Sara Andreotti, who was part of the team that released a paper in 2016 predicting what would come next: The DNA analysis of the shark population, combined with a visual count, revealed numbers that shocked the team.

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