Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide

9 Shark Problems (from a human’s viewpoint)

170 Chapter 9 Shark Problems (from a human’s viewpoint) Are some sharks pests? Ask anglers in the Puget Sound region of Washington State, in coastal British Columbia, and in many other places along the U.S. Pacific Coast, and they will tell you that Spiny Dogfish are a real nuisance. If you troll a herring while fishing for salmon, or bottomfish with bait for rockfish or Lingcod, you are much more likely to catch a dogfish than a salmon or ling. Getting the dogfish off your hook or out of a landing net without being nailed by its long, sharp, venomous spines can be a tricky business. Nurse Sharks are similarly viewed as something of a nuisance in some parts of the Caribbean because of their bait-stealing habits as well as because of their tendency to destroy fish traps while trying to get at the reef fish inside. Anglers in many other places consider sharks a nuisance because a fish struggling on a fishing line is like ringing a dinner bell for nearby sharks. In some places, it’s almost impossible to land a tuna or a billfish without having it attacked and often eaten (except for the head) by a shark. (Read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea for a fascinating account.) Long tooth marks on shark-decapitated tuna indicate that the shark swallows the tuna whole from behind, then slips back and bites down just behind the gills, eating the fleshy body and leaving behind the bony head for the frustrated angler. Can there be too many sharks in an area? Some people feel that any number of large sharks in a place where people swim is too many. But given the millions of people that swim in the 171 Shark Problems (from a human’s viewpoint) ocean and the extremely low number of attacks that occur each year, we feel such concerns are unjustified (see the next question). Someone swimming or fishing might find having a few sharks around troubling. But sharks seldom if ever reach the abundance achieved by some other elasmobranchs whose numbers do have serious economic and ecological impacts. Feeding schools of Cownose Rays along the eastern U.S. seaboard, commonly in shallow bays such as the Chesapeake, can number in the hundreds. The rays move across grass, mud, and sand flats, exposing prey with their flapping pectoral fins and then suctioning up food organisms with their mouths. They crush shellfish such as clams, oysters, and scallops using their pavement dentition. Their large numbers and high rates of shellfish consumption have led to proposals to create a commercial fishery targeting rays as a means of reducing ray predation on such commercially important organisms as clams and oysters. Are sharks dangerous to people? Before 1916, there was little fear of sharks in North America simply because there had been no documented shark attacks on humans in temperate waters (ignoring reports from other temperate countries such as Australia and South Africa). In 1891, Hermann Oelrichs, a banker and adventurer, even put up a sizable reward for anyone who could document a shark attack in the temperate waters of North America. Historian Michael Capuzzo concluded that respected scientists, shark experts included, were of the opinion that “sharks were not capable of inflicting serious injury to man.” A mountain of dogfish. Fishers targeting other species along the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada can wind up with more Spiny Dogfish than anything else, as happened with this catch off southern California. Photo by John Wallace, www .photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/fish0221.htm 172 Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide Everything changed in 1916, a story detailed in Capuzzo’s Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 and Richard Fernicola’s Twelve Days of Terror: A Definitive Investigation of the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks. In July of that year, over a span of less than two weeks, four people along New Jersey shores and creeks were killed by a shark, or sharks. The shark or sharks involved were either White Sharks or Bull Sharks, and many eyewitnesses were present to confirm the perpetrators as sharks. The attacks ended, causally or coincidentally, when a 2.25-m (7.5-ft) White Shark was captured in the area. It contained human body parts. These incidents inspired Peter Benchley’s book Jaws. About 75 unprovoked shark attacks on humans occur each year...