Sharks and Rays and Skates and Chimaeras: Spielberg/Benchley Messed it up big time back then for Great WHITES — Now?
'This administration’s greed and contempt for imperiled wildlife know no bounds.'
As a shark conservation scientist, one of the most common questions people ask me is, “How are shark populations doing?” To answer this question, it’s important to understand two types of fishery surveys: fishery-independent and fishery-dependent. Fishery-dependent population surveys gather data from fishermen’s catches. These data are valuable because there are many more fishermen on the water than marine biologists. However, they are limited because fishermen fish with the intent to catch as much as possible, which means they regularly change their methods to achieve higher yields. This makes sense economically but limits the scientific value of the data.
In contrast, fishery-independent surveys are designed to use the same methods, which are scientifically more rigorous. “They provide an unbiased characterization of many different things, particularly changes in the abundance of fish populations over time,” Dr. Robert Latour, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at William and Mary. “Since the survey is performed the same way during every research cruise, any changes in what you catch are due to something going on with the population, not changes in how we’re fishing.” — David Shiffman, Ph.D.
Pretty simple interview for my KYAQ show. Sharks, a researcher who is in DC shaping context around POLICY while holding onto the reality of why sharks have to be protected.
Sure, Trump and Company are killing, man, killing science for sure. Habitat? No Such Thing under Semen Drip and his Zeldin Wacko!
The Trump administration proposed a new rule Wednesday that would rescind widespread habitat protections for species protected under the Endangered Species Act, a landmark law enacted in 1973 to conserve the country’s imperiled animals and plants.
That would open the door for developments across the country to be approved even if they significantly disrupt critical habitat for species listed under the Endangered Species Act. The proposed rule, posted in the U.S. Federal Register by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, would “rescind the regulatory definition of ‘harm,’” which is defined as any significant habitat modification or degradation that actually kills or injures wildlife.
“There’s just no way to protect animals and plants from extinction without protecting the places they live, yet the Trump administration is opening the floodgates to immeasurable habitat destruction,” said Noah Greenwald, co-director of endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This administration’s greed and contempt for imperiled wildlife know no bounds, but most Americans know that we destroy the natural world at our own peril. Nobody voted to drive spotted owls, Florida panthers or grizzly bears to extinction.”
If approved, the rule would mean endangered species would only be protected from actions that intentionally lead to the harm of a species.
“It’s just foundational to how we’ve protected endangered species for the last 40-plus years, and they’re just completely upending that,” Greenwald said.
Photo below: David Shiffman, Ph.D.
Trump Administration’s interpretation of ‘harm’ could gut habitat protections for endangered species
By law, the ESA prohibits the “take” of an endangered species, which includes actions “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” Historically, the “harm” part of this mandate encompasses “any activity that can modify a species’ habitat.”
This interpretation of “harm” has long been used by agencies to extend protections for endangered species to the land or ocean area that it relies on. For example, an oil or gas project may not be able to drill or be forced to modify operations in a certain area that provides habitat for an endangered animal, such as a dune sagebrush lizard. In many cases, the “harm” rule has not blocked projects altogether, but rather resulted in different designs that reduce impacts on endangered species.
In 1995, a group of landowners and timber interests in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast challenged the regulation’s interpretation in a push to log forests where endangered northern spotted owls and red-cockaded woodpeckers lived. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the broad definition of “harm” on the basis of the Chevron Doctrine, a principle that defers to federal agencies’ expertise for carrying out laws. Last year, however, Chevron was overturned, and the Trump administration has seized on that in the new proposed rule.
The new proposal would eliminate this “harm” definition—and the habitat protections that come with it, according to Dave Owen, an environmental law professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
“The shift here would be to say that just habitat modification that is detrimental to a species, even if the detriment is fairly direct, is not encompassed within the word ‘harm,’” Owen said. The majority of habitat protections related to the ESA fall under the “harm” interpretation, according to a 2012 study by Owen. Now, under the proposal, “the word ‘harm’ is essentially going to be read as an inconsequential nullity,” he said.
+_+
A more realistic and radical perspective: Thirteen Years Ago, Paul Watson, of Sea Shepherd fame:
Quoting Watson . . . .
Captain Paul Watson: Fear and Loathing of Sharks in Western Australia
The truth is that hatred of sharks is a manufactured hysteria thanks primarily, although I’m sure without malice, to Steven Spielberg, who resurrected a long-extinct Megalodon shark as a vicious killing machine in Jaws. The notion of such a shark living today is as fictitious as being attacked in modern times by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Targeting Great White sharks means targeting an endangered species and is no different than calling for the extermination of tigers, rhinos, and whales. This is the same kind of shallow-thinking, ecologically ignorant mentality that was responsible for the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger.
If the Premier really wishes to reduce shark attacks he should address the human factors that contribute to shark attacks.
There are three primary reasons for increased shark attacks in the sea off the coast of Western Australia.
The most obvious reason is that blood and dead bodies in the water attract sharks and the ships that transport livestock are a primary source for this attraction. Dead animals are irresponsibly tossed overboard. The daily flow of urine and feces contains the smell of blood. Common sense dictates that if you pour blood into the sea, sharks will respond.
Being an economist, the Premier most likely has decided that the demands of agri-business and Muslims wanting live animals so they can slit their throats while pointing the eyes of their sacrifices towards Mecca, is more important than Australian sharks or Australian surfers.
The second reason is that into these same waters where the sharks are attracted there are surfers, and from below, a surfer on a board looks very much like a seal and not just any seal, but a relatively motionless seal, and to a shark that form flashes like a neon sign saying, EAT.
Even so, most shark attacks on surfers are aborted once the shark realizes that the surfer is not a seal. Still it can be bad news for the surfer.
Solution: Instead of spending excessive tax dollars to exterminate sharks, funds can be invested in creating shark deterrent devices for surfboards and for shark-spotting programs like in South Africa where people are hired to watch the surf and to sound an alarm if sharks are in the area. Research should also be carried out on shark behavior and region-specific environmental factors like the effect of discharged effluent from livestock vessels.
The third reason is overfishing, as the sharks in our oceans have their food resources diminished more and more each year. Those who argue that seals should be culled to lower shark populations are in fact encouraging more attacks because fewer seals will mean fewer meals, and thus more hungry and desperate sharks. If you deprive humans of food, they also are inclined to desperation and, as history clearly demonstrates, starving humans have a tendency to attack and eat other humans.
Premier Barnett has unfortunately already demonstrated in other areas that he prefers extremist solutions. When granting authority recently to police to search and seize property without any suspicion or evidence that a crime was committed, a member of the Barnett government voiced support of this policy by comparing it to the ‘effective’ security measures taken by Adolf Hitler. Premier Barnett defended the statement by Liberal Party member Peter Abetz by saying that Abetz had made a valid point.
And now the policy that Premier Barnett wishes to make is to implement a ‘final solution’ to exterminate sharks in the interest of security.
I have surfed, swum and dove for forty some years with sharks including Great Whites and Tigers and I have never met a shark that threatened my security as a human being.
I have, however, met many politicians who have.
Statistics of Note for Statistician Australian Premier Barnett:
The seven most dangerous sports in the United States:
Hang Gliding
Civilian Pilot
Mountain Climbing
Sky Diving
Recreational Boating
Motorcycle Riding
Scuba Diving (Unrelated to shark attacks, for which there have been very few.)
Annual Average Cause of Deaths in the World:
Automobile Accidents: 2,210,000
Lightning Strikes: 10,000
Fatal Accidents caused while Texting: 6,000
Motorcycles: 4,462 (in the USA alone)
Airplanes: 1,200
Falling or Drowning in Bathtubs: 340
Choking on Hot Dogs: 70
Bees and Wasps: 53
Skate Boarding: 50 (in the USA alone)
Jellyfish: 40
Dogs: 30
Ants: 30
Sky Diving: 21 (in the USA alone)
Vending machines: 13
Riding on Lawn Mowers: 5 (in the USA alone)
Sharks: 5
So David and I broached some of the issues around sharks’ decline and status as ecologically important and threatened animals in the web of marine life. Literally over 500 or six hundred species of these amazing creatures have been scientifically identified.
We talked about much out of this 2,000-page report: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report, Global Status of Sharks, Rays and Chimaeras,
The IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Shark Specialist Group (SSG) has published a status report on sharks, rays and chimaeras, nearly 20 years after its first report warned that sharks were threatened but underrepresented in conservation. Today we understand more about sharks, rays and chimaeras than ever before, but the scale of their declines threatens to outstrip improvements made in research and policy.
In Oman, shark liver oil is used in traditional eyeliner. In Indonesia, shark and ray skins are packaged as chips. Skates are the seafood counterpoint to buffalo wings at restaurants in the USA, along with mako and thresher sharks. Across Europe, you can sling a luxury stingray skin bag over your shoulder as you sample shark meat sold as European conger, order veau de mer in France, and find ray cheeks purveyed as a delicacy in Belgium. Ray and shark skins are fashioned into shoes, wallets, belts, handbags and purses in Thailand. In Yemen, even the corneas of shark eyes have been reportedly used for human transplant and the cartilage is marketed as a cure to all sorts of human ailments.
These are the extraordinary country-by-country insights detailed in the report, which consolidates the biology, fisheries, trade, conservation efforts, and policy reforms for sharks, rays and chimaeras across 158 countries and jurisdictions.
At more than 2,000 pages long, the report follows one in 2005 that highlighted a rise in the global fin trade and the low conservation profile of sharks, and especially rays and chimaeras.
Since then, the global demand for shark meat has nearly doubled: the value of shark and ray meat is now 1.7 times the value of the global fin trade. Trade has diversified and products such as ray gill plates, liver oil and skins are valued at nearly USD 1 billion annually.
Sarah Fowler of the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) led the 2005 report’s publication and contributed to the latest version.
“The conservation and management of sharks is difficult for a variety of reasons, but many governments are breaking down the silos that separate how we deal with sharks and rays as fisheries resources, and as wildlife to conserve.”
“Nearly 20 years after the first report, there have been drastic changes, with sharks and rays now among the most threatened vertebrates on the planet,” explains Alexandra Morata, the IUCN SSC SSG Programme Officer.
The challenges:
Overfishing is driving most species to extinction. Indonesia, Spain, and India are the world’s largest shark-fishing nations, with Mexico and the USA adding to the top five shark catchers. But only 26% of species globally are targeted: most are caught (and retained) as bycatch. Huge population declines have been seen in the rhino rays (such as wedgefish), whiprays, angel sharks, and gulper sharks.
But two decades of research and major policy changes also mean that the solutions are now outlined country by country and can guide governments to implement conservation action and make fisheries sustainable.
“This report is a call to action so we can work together and make each of the country recommendations a reality, especially those relating to responsible fisheries management. It is the only way these species will survive and continue to thrive in aquatic ecosystems,” says Dr Rima Jabado, the IUCN SSC deputy chair and SSG chair who led the 2024 report.
We need sharks, rays and chimaeras.
We are only beginning to decipher the role they play in delivering life-supporting resources and services. Some species cycle nutrients around the ocean; others help us fight climate change by acting as carbon sinks or maintaining carbon sequestering ecosystems like mangroves. They underpin food security in vulnerable coastal communities. In some developing nations, fishers have reported that more than 80% of their income depends on shark and ray fisheries.
“The report is also a reflection of the tremendous dedication of scientists, researchers and conservationists who are working as a community to contribute to conservation and make a lasting change,” Dr Jabado adds.
Access to remote areas, especially across Africa, has increased scientific understanding of the scale of exploitation. Knowledge has improved significantly in Asia, Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. There are also hopeful instances of sustainable fisheries in Canada, the USA, and Australia.
There have been incredible strides in research and policy, but this hard work will only save species from extinction if the report’s recommendations are implemented nationally.
“The message is clear,” says Dr Jabado. “With the precarious state of many of these species, we can’t afford to wait.”
Amazing that I have been with hammerheads in various waters, but many smaller ones in the hundreds off Baja . . .
Ran into these too in the Caribbean and elsewhere:
The powerful blue sharks, man, sleek, amazing: In California, where I was born!
Open wide, brother:
A whale of a shark:
Exotica:
The order Rhinopristiformes, also known as rhino rays or sharklike rays, is the most threatened order of marine fish (Kyne et al., 2020; Dulvy et al., 2021). It comprises five families: giant guitarfish (Glaucostegidae), sawfish (Pristidae), wedgefish (Rhinidae), guitarfish (Rhinobatidae), and banjo rays (Trygonorrhinidae; Last et al., 2016; IUCN, 2024). These 68 species of medium to large-sized, benthic rays have a similar posterior morphology to sharks and are distributed in temperate to tropical waters on the insular and continental shelves (usually <250 m depth) throughout the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans (Last et al., 2016; IUCN, 2024).
Information available suggests that rhino rays are strongly associated with soft-bottom habitats such as sand, mud or gravel, and some species are often observed in areas adjacent to coral reefs (White et al., 2013). The distribution of rhino rays is highly variable, from broadly distributed species (e.g., Bottlenose Wedgefish [Rhynchobatus australiae] and Giant Guitarfish [Glaucostegus typus]) to those with very restricted and/ or fragmented spatial distributions, such as Clown Wedgefish (Rhynchobatus cooki) known only from Lingga and Singkep Islands in Indonesia (Kyne et al., 2019; McDavitt & Kyne, 2020), and False Shark Ray (Rhynchorhina mauritaniensis) from a single location in the Eastern Central Atlantic (Iwik in the Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania; Séret & Naylor, 2016).
Like most other shark and ray species, rhino rays have relatively ‘slow’ life-histories with slow growth, late age at maturity, and low fecundity. Life-history data are not available for most species. Rhino rays are viviparous, with litter sizes generally range from one up to 20 pups, though most species typically have less than ten pups per litter (Last et al., 2016). The relatively low productivity in many of these species limits population growth rates and the resilience of these species to exploitation along with their ability to recover once depleted (D’Alberto et al., 2024).
Freshwater skates and rays, too:
Freshwater or euryhaline sharks and rays are usually a forgotten component of shark, ray, and chimera biodiversity, mainly because the vast majority of these species are associated with marine ecosystems. Freshwater rays are cartilaginous fish species that have adapted and developed the ability to live and complete their entire life cycles in freshwater environments (stenohaline), such as rivers, streams, and lakes (Grant et al., 2022).
Origin, systematics, and taxonomy.
Among all living sharks and rays, the Neotropical freshwater stingrays (subfamily Potamotrygoninae) form the only lineage that is exclusively obligate to freshwater environments (Thorson et al., 1978; Rosa, 1985; Lovejoy, 1996; de Carvalho et al., 2016; Fontenelle et al., 2021a). The origin of the subfamily Potamotrygoninae has been hypothesized to have been associated with marine incursion events from the Caribbean into the northeast portion of South America (Thorson et al., 1978; Lovejoy et al., 1998, 2006; Bloom & Lovejoy, 2017; Kirchhoff et al., 2017; Fontenelle et al., 2021b). However, the age of this freshwater lineage is still a topic of debate: while most studies using molecular data associate the origin of the potamotrygonins with the Pebas Wetlands System during the Oligocene-Miocene (Lovejoy et al., 1998; Albert et al., 2021; Fontenelle et al., 2021b), some authors estimate an earlier, Eocene origin (de Carvalho et al., 2004; Adnet et al., 2014).
Watson got criticized by the Fox network because he said worms, trees and bees are more important than people. They got really outraged when he replied with the simple fact that worms, trees and bees can live on this planet without us but we could not live without them.
“People will say you don’t care about people and I guess that’s true but in a way what we do to protect the ocean is protecting the people. We need them, they don’t need us. For example, phytoplankton. We’ve had a 40 percent decrease since 1950. If phytoplankton goes extinct, we go extinct. It provides 70 percent of the oxygen in the air. So people need to become aware of the interdependence of species and how important they are for our survival.”
Listen to David and me talk sharks. He’s serious about this scientific field and he is passionate, and I call him Dave the Shark Science Guy, after Jim Nye that Science Guy!
Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator by David Shiffman
[Dr. David Shiffmanis a Washington, DC-based marine conservation scientist who focuses on the ecology of endangered species and how to protect them. He received his Ph.D. in environmental science and policy from the University of Miami, and is an alum of the Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellowship in Conservation Leadership. He is the author of “Why Sharks Matter,” and invites you to follow him on Bluesky, where he’s always happy to answer any questions anyone has about sharks, marine biology, or ocean conservation.]
*****
20 years ago: Peter Benchley, author of Jaws.
Quoting him:
Please, in the name of nature, do not mount a mindless assault on an endangered animal for making an innocent – however tragic – mistake.
I’ve just this minute learned about Monday’s ghastly, fatal attack by a great white shark. While I cannot pretend to comprehend the grief felt by Ken Crew’s friends and family, and would not conceive of diminishing the horror of the attack, I plead with the people of Australia – who live with, understand and, in general, respect sharks more than any other nation on earth – to refrain from slaughtering this magnificent ocean predator in the hope of achieving some catharsis, some fleeting satisfaction, from wreaking vengeance on one of nature’s most exquisite creations.
Though I was not there, though I did not witness the hideous moment, I can say absolutely that the shark was not acting with malice toward the man; not with intent to do bodily harm. It was doing what sharks do: assaulting perceived prey.
Australia has had a run of extremely bad luck recently: three human beings have been killed by great white sharks. But it is important for us to realise that these are freak occurrences that by no means signal a sudden onslaught by sharks on swimmers and surfers.
The oft-quoted statistics remain true: shark attacks are very, very rare, and fatal attacks even rarer. A human being is still more likely to die of a bee sting, snake bite or, Lord knows, automobile accident than by shark attack.
We do not execute the perpretrators of death by car. We should not butcher an animal for an inadvertent homicide.
It’s also important that we understand that the shark is not invading our territory, threatening our homes or livelihoods; we humans are the trespassers. And if we choose to swim in the sea, to enter the realm of these wonderful animals – animals that have survived, virtually unchanged, for millions of years, animals that serve a critical function in the oceanic food chain – we are taking a chance.
If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.
No person of sound mind would annihilate all tigers or snakes or crocodiles; we should resist the temptation to mark sharks for destruction.
This was not a rogue shark, tantalised by the taste of human flesh and bound now to kill and kill again. Such creatures do not exist, despite what you might have derived from Jaws.
When I wrote the book and film a quarter of a century ago, knowledge of sharks was in its infancy. We believed that sharks actually attacked boats; we believed that they actively sought out human prey. We believed that their numbers were infinite and the threat they posed incalculable.
Over the years, we have come to know otherwise. Over those same years, unfortunately, the demand worldwide for shark products has soared, and improved technology has given man the tools to slaughter sharks wholesale to meet that demand.
Around the world every year, approximately a dozen people are killed by sharks, while 100m sharks are killed by man. We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain – with catastrophic consequences that we can’t begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member.
Let us mourn the man and forgive the animal, for, in truth, it knew not what it did.
Great White, Deep Trouble, a documentary about Peter Benchley and his work
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