2 sharks found with fins removed
Illegal act makes survival harder
By MOLLY MURRAY • The News Journal • December 16, 2010
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20101216/NEWS/12160352
A team of Delaware State University graduate students went on a routine shark research trip and made an unsettling discovery.
As they pulled in the multihook line they had set in Delaware Bay last summer, they came upon a sand tiger shark – just the species they were looking for.
But they were not prepared for what they saw. Almost all of its fins had been sliced off.
On another day, they got a second shark that also had been “finned.”
“Somehow or another, they survived,” Dewayne Fox, an associate professor at DSU, said of the two sharks.
The discovery may be significant for two reasons. It could be a signal that illegal shark finning is occurring in Delaware Bay or nearby waters. It is also very rare for a shark to survive finning, said John Carlson, a research biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service.
In 2009, a federal court in Atlanta sentenced a so-called shark-fin kingpin to five years’ probation and fined him $5,000 for violating federal wildlife protection laws.
Mark L. Harrison was arrested trying to sell 211 fins from three species of protected sharks.
For sharks, losing their fins is like an airplane losing its wings, he said.
“It most cases, they can’t maintain buoyancy,” Carlson said. Without fins, hunting, maneuvering and turning are difficult.
Sand tiger sharks are slightly different. They are one of the few shark species that maintain neutral buoyancy, he said.
They are common in Delaware Bay from June through about August. But the species is so depleted throughout its Atlantic Coast range that they are protected. Commercial and recreational anglers can’t target them or keep them.
The species takes years to reach sexual maturity and when females begin to pup, they have just two live births at a time. Sometimes, it’s every year. Other times, it’s once every two to three years. That makes it difficult for the species to rebound quickly when numbers drop.
Merry Camhi, director of New York Seascape at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, said that it’s not illegal to sell or trade shark fins in the United States.
What is illegal is taking the fin from the shark and then throwing the rest of the shark overboard.
Once the fins are removed, it’s difficult to know what species of shark they came from, she said.
The fins can be very valuable. Millions of sharks are killed each year. Many are killed to meet the demand for shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy.
Shark meat typically sells for anywhere from 5 to 50 cents a pound on the wholesale market. The fins can sell for $20 to more than $100 a pound, Carlson said, although commercial fishermen say sand tiger fins are among the least desirable.
“Finning is a very wasteful practice,” Camhi said. “And many conservation organizations also talk about it as a cruelty issue.”
In 2010, Hawaii enacted the first law banning the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. Other states and countries are considering similar legislation.
Typically, sharks sink to the bottom and die once their fins are removed.
“We know that most of them die,” she said.
When they do survive, “clearly their survivorship is compromised. … They still have their teeth, but they may not be able to maneuver or even migrate.”
The question is whether the two sharks that were finned in Delaware Bay would even be able to migrate south to warmer water once it got cold, she said.
Fox and his research team know that Delaware Bay sand tigers travel great distances.
One fish they outfitted with a radio transmitter in July 2008 left Delaware Bay and headed south to Indian River Inlet. On Valentine’s Day 2009, they picked up a radio signal from the same shark off Cape Canaveral in Florida. By the summer of 2009, it was back in Delaware Bay and last February, it was picked up off Cape Canaveral again.
Fox said his graduate students took tissue samples and inserted external tags in the two finned sharks, but decided the two animals had already been through enough trauma and decided against inserting radio tags under their skin.
Fox said he wonders if the two fish will survive.
“It can’t be good,” he said. “How do they chase down a prey item if they are limited in how fast they can swim?”
Fox worries it may be a developing problem.
Delaware Bay is so significant as a major summer feeding and pupping area that what happens here has wide-ranging significance.
“If there is a problem in Delaware Bay,” he said, “there’s very little hope for recovery.”
Only read a couple of sentences because honestly it’s disturbing to me. I truely respect these animals.