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Gulf Today
7 days ago
- Science
- Gulf Today
Former shark fishermen now work to protect animal
Amber Hazzard, Tribune News Service They hesitated at first, but the fishermen jumped into the water after realising how calm the tiger sharks were, said Chelsea Black. Black, a postdoctoral researcher at UNC-Chapel Hill, spent two weeks at sea, teaching shark fishermen how to tag and release the animals rather than kill them. Black partners with Project Hiu, a nonprofit organization in Indonesia, to educate locals on shark conservation while giving them an alternative income source. 'Whether you're in North Carolina or you're in Indonesia, sharks are important to you,' she explained. 'The health of shark populations contributes to the health of our oceans.' Why do we need sharks? Sharks live all over the world, and several species visit North Carolina each summer. UNC has the longest-running shark survey in the country, managed by its Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, North Carolina. These top predators eat smaller animals, balancing the populations of fish and other marine life. For example, sharks protect coral reefs by eating fish that graze on coral. Without sharks, these fish would overpopulate and destroy the coral reefs that protect beaches from storms. 'Many people, especially in coastal areas like North Carolina, rely on a healthy ocean ecosystem for our economy, business and food,' Black said. However, the population of many shark species has declined over the past 50 years. Increased demand for shark and their products has contributed to this decline, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Catching sharks to make money off of them is known as commercial shark fishing. Shark fins, in particular, are highly profitable. 'They're being fished and killed before they can reproduce ... killing the next generation of sharks,' Black said. Indonesia sits between the Indian and Pacific oceans and is home to hundreds of shark species. It is also one of the largest shark fishing nations in the world. To counteract this, Project Hiu hires fisherman to provide shark-friendly tourism activities, such as swimming with sharks. Project founder Madison Stewart repurposed a fleet of shark fishing vessels for the ecotourism business. After noticing that fishermen were primarily catching tiger sharks during September and October, Stewart invited Black to come to Indonesia and start a satellite research project tagging tiger sharks. Tiger sharks are named for the dark vertical strips on the side of their body. Averaging 10 to 14 feet and 850 to 1,400 lbs., they are one of the largest shark species. The team studies tiger sharks because they are fished less due to their low fin value. This increases their odds of surviving long enough to provide helpful information. Tagging these sharks is a team effort, with two or three people in the water, Black leaning over the side of the boat and others assisting. First, the team flips the shark upside down, putting it in a trance to safely take measurements that help the team ascertain its age and health. A fin-clip sample helps trace a shark's ancestry and what part of the world they come from. Then, they flip the shark right side up to place tags on the shark's dorsal, or top, fin. These tags show how far and/or deep the sharks are moving, revealing the shark's migration patterns, she said. Once the sharks are tagged, they are named and released. Most are named after the fishermen's children. The team has now deployed 10 tags and discovered a tiger shark hot spot. 'We found they're all staying in one small area for months, and we only have a few cases of this around the world,' Black said. The team still has a lot to uncover, however, as they are the first to tag tiger sharks in Indonesia. Black will return in September, adding 15 more tags, to better understand when the sharks are gathering and why. The goal is to show that making the hot spot a government-protected area could potentially help multiple sharks species , Black explained. It's feasible, she added, considering the hot spot is 'probably 40 square kilometers' which is 'not very big in terms of the ocean.' Potential protections could cover all or certain species of sharks for parts or the whole year, depending on migration patterns. Without this protection, Black fears certain species will go extinct in this region. The loss of shark populations in Indonesia could have ripple effects all over the world. 'It's kind of this chain reaction,' she said. 'We need to care about these things happening in the ocean across the world because it impacts every single person living on Earth.'
Daily Maverick
13-06-2025
- Science
- Daily Maverick
From Gansbaai to Indonesia: The astonishing 38,000km+ voyage of a misidentified white shark
This shark tale almost sank through the mesh of history into the murky deep but through sheer happenstance it improbably surfaced from the depths and into the light of scientific discovery. In November 2016, a female white shark that had been satellite tagged off the Western Cape coastal town of Gansbaai in May 2012 was caught and killed by longline fishermen in Indonesian waters — but it would take years for the shark's fate to emerge. The shark, named Alicia, has travelled an astonishing 38,000km by the time her satellite tag stopped emitting 1,000km southeast of Madagascar, according to scientists who have reported their findings in a soon to be published article in the peer-reviewed journal Wildlife Research. Alicia from there made her way to Indonesia — the longest recorded migration of the species and the first time that a white shark from South African waters turned up in South East Asia. 'This report marks only the second recorded transoceanic dispersal event for the species from South Africa, highlighting that despite extensive research, much remains to be learned about white sharks' dispersal patterns in the southern hemisphere,' the authors write. 'The movement between southern Africa and Southeast Asia surpasses the 11,000km dispersal recorded for another sub-adult female white shark (named Nicole) from Gansbaai, South Africa, to the west coast of Australia.' A happenstance of history And this shark tale almost sank through the mesh of history into the murky deep, but through sheer happenstance it improbably surfaced from the depths and into the light of scientific discovery. The shark's first transmission via satellite from its tag was recorded on 5 June 2012 in South African waters. Its last was sent 22 months later, in April 2014, 1,000km southeast of Madagascar. After that there was radio silence, the shark's fate unknown as it travelled further through Neptune's realm. And then, it turned out that Indonesian fishers had the tag as it had been extracted from the shark after it was caught in 2016 on a longline — and they rose to the monetary chum thrown out by an NGO called Project Hiu. 'Project Hiu works with local fishers in Indonesia to conserve sharks and has recently begun deploying satellite tags and offering a monetary reward for observing or recovering any shark tag… The fishers kept the tag and contacted Project Hiu members after learning about the monetary reward,' the scientists report. The fishers netted an undisclosed amount of cash while researchers reeled in scientific gold. Project Hiu contacted a company called Wildlife Computers with the serial number. Wildlife Computers provides advanced wildlife telemetry services such as tagging devices — and it had this tag in its database. 'Remarkably, the tag was identified as having been attached to a 390cm TL sub-adult female white shark in May 2012 in South Africa. Through subsequent investigations, including email correspondence and interviews with the fishers, we have determined that in November 2016, a 473cm TL female shark (misidentified at the time as a longfin mako shark) was captured in longline gear off the coast of Indonesia, Southeast Asia,' the authors write. Scientific advancement and red flags This astonishingly improbable sequence of events has enriched the scientific knowledge of the species while raising red flags about the misidentification of sharks caught and harvested by the commercial fishing industry in that region and more widely. 'Our shark was misidentified as a longfin mako. Fisheries records indicate about 30 of these are caught and landed in the area each year, and some level of misidentification is thought to be present in these records,' lead author Dylan Irion, an ecologist and PHD candidate at UCT, told Daily Maverick. 'What's worth noting is that the identification guidebook used by enumerators does not include a key for the white shark. It's also notable that this shark was gut-hooked.' 'Gut-hooked' effectively rules out catch and release. The bottom line is that much of the data in this regard may be unreliable, and catches and mortality of white sharks and other endangered sharks may be much higher than the numbers suggest. This meandering trip to Indonesia also throws into stunning relief the sheer stamina and adaptability of white sharks. This is a species that can travel bloody far, and it is not fussy about the hoods it moves through. 'In 2013, following a brief window of no satellite transmissions, the shark transmitted a location from inside the uThukela Banks Marine Protected Area located between the cities of Durban and Richards Bay along the South African coast, marking the start of a journey covering about 38,000km over 395 days, transmitting with a mean period of 8.55 hours between transmissions,' the authors write. 'During this time, she encountered a wide range of sea surface temperatures, ranging from 3.8 to 29°C, swam at an average speed of 56km per day and covered a cumulative distance of 37,178km, measured as the straight-line distance between satellite transmissions.' That fittingly is the equivalent of swimming the distance of the Two Oceans Marathon every day. 'What continues to amaze me is how remarkably adaptable these sharks are, capable of thriving in an incredible range of environments, from the cold kelp forests of the Cape, sub-polar waters of sub-Antarctic, to the warm coral reefs of Indonesia,' Dr Alison Kock, a marine biologist and renowned shark expert at SANParks who was one of the co-authors of the paper, told Daily Maverick. Mysteries of the deep This long marine trek also comes against the backdrop of debates about why white sharks have seemingly vanished from previous hotspots for the species, such as Gansbaai. Research by Kock and other scientists strongly suggests the species has moved eastward to escape the unwanted attention of a pair of orcas who have been preying on white sharks for their nutrient-rich livers. Other scientists maintain the populations off Gansbaai and other Cape locations were in decline before the liver-loving orcas rocked up, with the commercial fishing industry seen as a prime culprit despite the white sharks' protected status. The drum lines deployed by KZN Sharks Board's bather safety programme is also reaping a toll. A white shark tagged in Mossel Bay in May was recently killed in a drum line off the coast of Margate. This correspondent has previously highlighted the jarring fact that when a US video crew came to South Africa in 1969 with the goal of filming white sharks from cages it went straight to Durban to follow commercial whaling vessels. The crew did not even consider the Cape waters, which get only a brief but tantalising mention in the classic book about the expedition by Peter Matthiessen entitled Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark. This suggests that white sharks over five decades ago may not have been abundant in the cold Cape waters. South Africa's white sharks appear for a range of factors to come and go — and when they go, they can clearly go far. DM
