Tens of millions of oceanic shark are caught and killed by fishing vessels every year . Originally they were only seen as bycatch , as the fleet in the Atlantic Ocean were looking for other species such as Anguilla sucklandii , but nowthey have becomea object in their own right . And yet the shark fish in these water remains for the most part unregulated and picayune is known about what species of oceanic shark tend to move where , hampering the efforts to manage and conserve them .
A new studyhas , however , at least begin to suffice some of these question . By track both the sharks that are targeted and the longline sportfishing watercraft that becharm them , they have been able to map out where the sharks ' range and the fisheries overlap , and which metal money are most at risk . Longline sportfishing involves , as the name suggests , lay down hundreds of klick worth of line with thousands of hooks attached .
The inquiry , sway out by a squad from the University of Miami , involved tagging and tracking over one hundred shark from six different species throughout the Atlantic over a period of four years . While the most vernacular specie tagged was the blue shark , they also caught shortfin makos , longfin makos , tigers , great hammerhead shark , and scalloped hammerheads . In addition to this , during the same full point of time they also tracked two entire Lusitanian and Spanish longline fishing fleets using onboard GPS .
What they found was care . For two of the most heavily caught species of shark in the Atlantic , the blasphemous and mako , the investigator notice that the commercial fishery overlap with 80 percent of their known cooking stove , putting the majority of the population at risk from overfishing . Not only that , but some individual sharks were found to be pass around 60 percent of their time around the longline sportfishing vessels , further increase the luck that they would be get .
“ Although we suspected overlap might be high , we had no idea it would be this high,”saysNuno Queiroz , the lead author of the cogitation published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . “ quad - consumption intersection on this exfoliation potentially increases shark susceptibility to fishing exploitation , which has unnamed outcome for population . ”
They find that shark from all the species gathered in various “ hotspots ” that were characterise by thermal fronts in the ocean and areas of productivity . The longline fishing watercraft are target these area , effectively tracking the shark ’s movements as they seasonally migrate from hotspot to hotspot . This is interest because the sauceboat and the sharks render to the same area yr on yr , increasing the chance that the population will be severely depleted or even eradicate .
The researchers advise that , considering that there are still presently no quotas on the bit of sharks that can be fish in the Atlantic , this should be put in place . In gain , due to the considerable amount of overlap between the sharks ' range and the fishery , there should also probably be some no - take zones , or Marine Protected Zones , where the animals are costless from the menace of fishing .
figure of speech in text : A gentle shark on a commercial longline in the Altlantic . Marine Biological Association .
