Pew - more Sanctuaries in the Offing?

Possible Pitcairn MPA - four times the size of the UK!

Something's brewing!

Yes once again that would be Pew.

I just had a conversation with a fellow activists about those Shark conservation orgs, and why IMO Pew continue to stand head and shoulders above the rest: because they are fact and consensus based and pursue policies, MPAs and Sanctuaries that translate immediately into less Sharks being killed which in my book is the only metric for success.

Now it appears that we're in for some more victories.

Experience tells me that with the infamous exception of Fiji, once they go public, negotiations are already well underway and the deal is essentially all but done. So behold Bermuda and Panama - and Pitcairn that will further close the Pacific to Shark fishing, and further point to us as being the odd man out.

Enjoy the video!

What everybody needs to know

I stand corrected.

I was intuitively of the opinion that oceanic Sharks are most likely doomed for extinction, a hypothesis that reverberates in some of my posts like this one.
I was obviously influenced by the fact that I live in the South Pacific where fishing for coastal Sharks, compared to the killing of Sharks by the Tuna fleets, appears to be a relatively minor threat. But CJA Bradshaw is of course right when he says that globally, the threats to coastal species are higher as they don't only have to contend with fishing pressure, but with habitat degradation and climate change on top of that, likely most of it anthropogenic (the latter being a comment by me, not him).

The relevant paper he has co-authored is called Susceptibility of Sharks, Rays and Chimaeras to Global Extinction and I invite anybody who wants to talk about Shark conservation with any degree of authority to download it here. Yes you will have to pay for it - but it's a must-read and must-have and the authors need to be compensated for their hard work.

Please, take the time to read it in its entirety.
But for those in a hurry, here's a synopsis on Bradshaw's own excellent conservation blog. The authors have also published the following FOC abstract (highlights in italic are mine).

Abstract Marine biodiversity worldwide is under increasing threat, primarily as a result of over-harvesting, pollution and climate change.
Chondrichthyan fishes (sharks, rays and chimaeras) have a perceived higher intrinsic risk of extinction compared to other fish. Direct fishing mortality has driven many declines, even though some smaller fisheries persist without associated declines. Mixed-species fisheries are of particular concern, as is illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The lack of specific management and reporting mechanisms for the latter means that many chondrichthyans might already be susceptible to extinction from stochastic processes entirely unrelated to fishing pressure itself.

Chondrichthyans might also suffer relatively more than other marine taxa from the effects of fishing and habitat loss and degradation given coastal habitat use for specific life stages.
The effects of invasive species and pollution are as yet too poorly understood to predict their long-term role in affecting chondrichthyan population sizes. The spatial distribution of threatened chondrichthyan species under World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List criteria are clustered mainly in (1) south-eastern South America; (2) western Europe and the Mediterranean; (3) western Africa; (4) South China Sea and Southeast Asia and (5) south-eastern Australia. To determine which ecological and life history traits predispose chondrichthyans to being IUCN Red-Listed, and to examine the role of particular human activities in exacerbating threat risk, we correlated extant marine species' Red List categorisation with available ecological (habitat type, temperature preference), life history (body length, range size) and human-relationship (whether commercially or game-fished, considered dangerous to humans) variables. Threat risk correlations were constructed using generalised linear mixed-effect models to account for phylogenetic relatedness. We also contrasted results for chondrichthyans to marine teleosts to test explicitly whether the former group is intrinsically more susceptible to extinction than fishes in general. Around 52% of chondrichthyans have been Red-Listed compared to only 8% of all marine teleosts; however, listed teleosts were in general placed more frequently into the higher-risk categories relative to chondrichthyans. IUCN threat risk in both taxa was positively correlated with body size and negatively correlated albeit weakly, with geographic range size. Even after accounting for the positive influence of size, Red-Listed teleosts were still more likely than chondrichthyans to be classified as threatened.

We suggest that while sharks might not have necessarily experienced the same magnitude of deterministic decline as Red-Listed teleosts, their larger size and lower fecundity (not included in the analysis) predispose chondrichthyans to a higher risk of extinction overall.

Removal of these large predators can elicit trophic cascades and destabilise the relative abundance of smaller species.
Predator depletions can lead to permanent shifts in marine communities and alternate equilibrium states. Climate change might influence the phenology and physiology of some species, with the most probable response being changes in the timing of migrations and shifts in distribution.

The synergistic effects among harvesting, habitat changes and climate-induced forcings are greatest for coastal chondrichthyans with specific habitat requirements and these are currently the most likely candidates for extinction.
Management of shark populations must take into account the rate at which drivers of decline affect specific species. Only through the detailed collection of data describing demographic rates, habitat affinities, trophic linkages and geographic ranges, and how environmental stressors modify these, can extinction risk be more precisely estimated and reduced. The estimation of minimum viable population sizes, below which rapid extinction is more likely due to stochastic processes, is an important component of this endeavour and should accompany many of the current approaches used in shark management worldwide.

I find this paper so important that I've taken the liberty of posting its conclusions below.
They tie in beautifully with some of this blog's principal threads, among which the requirement to push for sustainable fisheries. What I however miss is the call for applying the precautionary principle (much called for and rarely heeded, especially in Fisheries management) until the necessary data have been collected and evaluated - but then again, this is a paper dealing with facts and not a conservation manifesto.

Required reading and kudos to the authors for having written an excellent, informative, exhaustive and in so may ways, seminal paper for Shark conservation!

7. Concluding Remarks

We are still in the fortunate situation that there are no recorded cases of chondrichthyan extinction in modern times.
However, we have identified that the largest, most range-restricted and heavily harvested species might be easily pushed below their MVP sizes, which could be much larger than those estimated under stable environmental conditions. Fishing, at all scales, represents one of the largest mortality sources for many chondrichthyan species, but there are some examples of small local fisheries that have operated without clear declines in population size of targeted species. However, mixed-species fisheries that harvest poorly measured, but presumably large quantities of chondrichthyans are of particular concern, as is IUU fishing.

The lack of specific management and reporting mechanisms for the latter types means that many species might already be reduced to densities where extinction risk is unacceptably high.
It is almost universally recognised now that so-called ‘sustainable’ fisheries will have to be the norm if they are to survive economically, and that they will have to demonstrate negligible or minimal impacts to ecosystems through careful management and stewardship (Hilborn, 2007). IUU fishing can affect shark populations and community structure, and this might be a far greater challenge to control. Recreational fishing and beach meshing can also contribute to local declines. Climate change and habitat degradation will further erode certain populations to the point where extinction risk rises appreciably.

The idea that chondrichthyans have life history characteristics that might predispose them to extinction in a rapidly changing world (e.g. relatively low reproductive potential, growth and capacity for population recovery; Pratt and Casey, 1990) is generally upheld by our results. Furthermore, because chondrichthyans tend to occupy the highest trophic levels, it is arguable that degradation of marine communities might limit the prey quality and quantity available to chondrichthyan predators, further exacerbating population reductions. We found no strong evidence, from admittedly simple models with few parameters, that chondrichthyans are intrinsically more susceptible to extinction than other marine fishes in relation to their evolved niches and life history characteristics. However, chondrichthyans tend to be larger than many other marine fish taxa, and large body size generally correlates with slower growth and lower reproductive capacity. As such, it is the rapid pace of environmental change and harvesting that have the greatest potential to impede certain species from maintaining large population sizes. Any species can withstand moderate to even extreme exploitation if it does not outpace intrinsic replacement rates and adaptation potential (Brook et al., 2008).

We were unable to examine all plausible correlates of threat risk due to data paucity.
Many studies have examined age at maturity and growth rates in terms of vulnerability to extinction, with late-maturing and slow-growing species apparently at greater risk (Reynolds et al., 2005). Therefore, a better compilation of data incorporating these and other possible correlates could reveal further subtleties in the drivers of threat risk in this taxon and other marine fishes. Another caveat is that predictors of threat risk indicate a species’ sensitivity to the largely systematic (deterministic) drivers of population decline (declining population paradigm) (Cardillo, 2003; Sodhi et al., 2008a), whereas actual extinction appears to correlate poorly with ecological and life history traits given that the final coup de grâce tends to result from largely stochastic processes that act independently of a species’ evolutionary history (Brook et al., 2006, 2008; Sodhi et al., 2008b; Traill et al., 2007)

There are many examples of how large predators influence communities and ecosystems via top-down (and in some cases, bottom-up) control of species occupying lower trophic levels.
Thus, the removal of large predators can elicit trophic cascades and destabilise the relative abundance of smaller prey and non-prey species. However, these effects are still poorly understood, especially for large, complex trophic webs where interactions are largely unquantified. Specifically, chondrichthyans can alter prey diversity and size distributions, and their mere presence can affect the foraging behaviour of prey that alters ecosystem functions such as nutrient recycling and structural habitat complexity.

Severe predator depletions can lead to permanent shifts in marine communities and alternate equilibria.
Management of shark populations must therefore take into account the rate at which drivers of decline affect specific species. Only through detailed collection of data describing demographic rates, habitat affinities, trophic linkages and geographic ranges, and how environmental stressors modify these, can extinction risk be estimated and reduced. The estimation of MVP sizes is an essential component of this endeavour and should, in our view, eventually accompany the current approaches used to manage sharks worldwide.

Too Many!

I did like Patric's Sunday Sermon.

It's in the comments section of this post, after which he has posted this one.
Both deal with the numbers circulated by some Shark activists and warn that if we argue with faulty data, we lose credibility and ultimately harm the cause. All very truthful, important and timely indeed.

Thing is, maybe it's really not that much of an issue as nobody really knows what's going on anyway.

Take the assertion that 90% of all Sharks have been wiped out.

"Sharks"?
Cookie Cutter Sharks? Greenland Sharks? Whale Sharks? Pigeye Sharks?
I've said it before, like "Birds", "Sharks" is an amorphous concept that leaves very little scope for generalizations. What we seem to know is that the stocks of some of the large, oceanic species like Silky, Oceanic Whitetip, Blue, Scalloped Hammerhead and the Threshers that are being targeted in tandem with other apex predators like the Tuna and the Billfishes have collapsed. Other coastal species, like e.g. the Caribbean Reef, Bull and Tiger appear to fare better and are still locally abundant.
Clearly, the assertion is not true - but then, what is?

Think baseline count, the original 100%.
Do we have that information?
I'm inclined to believe that when somebody tells me that over 90% of the large Sharks in the Mediterranean have been wiped out, it is based on fact. The Mediterranean Sea is surrounded by many highly developed countries that could well have established the apparatus for collecting population data and for monitoring any fishing taking place there, and the changes that the relatively recent industrial exploitation of Fish stocks have brought about in the last 30-40 years.
But how about, say, Yemen, another place where there is a large Shark fishing industry? Do you really believe that there are reliable data about the Sharks being landed in comparison to before, or a reliable census of Shark stocks in the Southern Red Sea compared to 1960?

And with that in mind, are the numbers of Sharks killed every year really between 25 and 75 million? 100 million? Or even between 150 and 200 million as one Shark conservation website claims?
And again: is that relevant? What species are we talking about? And how do those numbers relate to the total size of the relevant stocks and the carrying capacity of their habitat? Is that 1%, 10% per annum, or is it more than that? And what is the rate at which those stocks replenish?

Thing is, nobody knows and all of the numbers that are being circulated are nothing more than elaborate and more or less plausible estimates, with huge discrepancies based on individual assumptions (how much goes under- or un-reported, etc) and mathematical models.
Thus, the theoretically impeccable rule postulated on an interesting and intelligent conservation biology blog, that one needs to manage populations in function of the minimum viable population size is certainly highly interesting - in theory. But in practice, it's utterly useless and once again, nothing but an erudite crapshoot when applied to the urgent need to preserve marine species that are often spread across immense areas. Is it really plausible to postulate that approx. 5,000 Blue Sharks spread across the vastness of the Oceans would ensure that the species would survive? And who, please, would be able to count, let alone manage them?

But as I said, the numbers are rather irrelevant anyway.
What is relevant, I believe, is that anybody who has knowledge of the Sea is aware that the marine environment in general and Sharks in particular are in real bad shape.
I remember sailing into Cocos’ Chatham Bay in the eighties and there would be Shark fins crisscrossing the surface everywhere, and heaps of huge Silvertips on every dive. Or sitting at Dirty Rock and witnessing a never ending procession of Hammerheads that would completely fill my field of vision - up, down, left and right, as far as I could see. They were thousands - and today, a couple of hundred are a major event. Or take the Silvertips on the Burma Banks and the guaranteed Whale Shark sightings at Richelieu Rock: gone, likely forever. Or diving with Blue Sharks off San Diego: not anymore commercially viable.
And the list goes on and on and on.

This, and not a set of numbers that are not very tangible and may, or may not be factually correct is why many of us have become Shark conservation advocates.

Want a number, as in how many?
How about: Too Many!

The principal threat to large oceanic Sharks is the fishing industry that targets their fins. This fishery appears to be unsustainable, as witnessed by the reported regional (and some say: global) collapse of stocks.
Here, the main thrust of any conservation efforts needs to be sustainability: first, the stocks that have been overly depleted need to be allowed to recover and after that, one has to agree on quotas. All of that should be based on proper data that so far are largely lacking and until they have been gathered, it is imperative to apply the precautionary principle, operate under worst-case scenarios and to err on the side of caution.
But once the data have been collected, we must be willing to compromise and to allow for the sustainable (and ethical, meaning no finning) harvesting of Sharks as long as there will be demand for their fins – and yes, for the umpteenth time, I’m repeating myself!

On the other hand, and very much depending on location, the principal threat to coastal Sharks appears to be habitat degradation coupled with fishing pressure.
Here, on top of promoting sustainable fishing, one needs to focus on preserving the habitat, be it coral reefs or the equally important nursery areas. This is precisely the kind of work conducted by us here in Fiji, by having established a marine reserve, by now focusing our work on the river nurseries and by sponsoring plenty of research aimed at helping us take the correct decisions. And yes, we’re also engaged in promoting pro-Shark legislation, conservation and awareness.

There’s much to do and it’s not going to be easy.
But maybe contrary to others, I really do believe that it’s neither impossible nor too late.
Shark conservation has come a long way and despite of the inevitable setbacks, we thankfully appear well on course to changing perceptions and to finally depict and treat Sharks as what they are: not unpredictable monsters nor misunderstood pets – but charismatic predators that like their terrestrial counterparts need to be respected and above all, to be protected as they are important and often essential elements of their habitats which they help to regulate.

Long story short: everybody who loves Sharks will find a suitable niche where he can make a useful contribution.
But like Patric, I just wish that everyone could abstain from gratuitous sensationalism and activism and really focus on the task at hand, to engage in effective and pragmatic Shark conservation. That includes less idle chat and more hard and often tedious and frustrating work, less dogmatism and more compromise, less propaganda and more hard facts, less infighting and more coordination, less squandering of precious and finite resources and goodwill.

And above all: lots of love and respect for the animals and passion for the cause!

Conservation - Filipino Style!

Pic from http://www.marketmanila.com

From a Filipino Cooking Blog.

KINUNOT RECIPE

1 kilo of Shark or Manta Ray
3 Coconuts (grated from the market)10 Lemons (kalamansi)
3 Cups Malunggay Leaves
10 pcs chili peppers (Labuyo)
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 tbsp. coconut oil
1 cup chopped onions

DIRECTIONS: Prepare a large pot by placing the shark or manta ray with just enough of water to cover the fish. Bring to a boil and take out the fish and dispose the foul hot water. Let the fish to cool off, meanwhile, cut and press all the kalamaPnsi in a bowl. Flake the fish from its bones and set aside. Prepare the grated coconut by mixing a cup of lukewarm water and pressing it with both hands, pouring the cream to the prepared bowl, then set aside. In a hot pan, put 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, then saute the garlic and onions until golden brown. Place the flaked fish and the lemon juice (kalamansi), then let it cook for another 10 minutes. Add the pressed grated coconut cream, the malunggay leaves and the chilies and let it simmer for another 10 minutes until the dish is almost dry. Serve it hot on a dish with steamed rice.

And then, this

Sad to say that sharks are included in the list for extinction nowadays as shark fins were needed much for the soup delicacy in all of Asia by Chinese restaurants. As an environmentalist, I do not recommend to cook shark for Kinunot. We only cook the Manta Ray which is still very sufficient in numbers in the oceans.

Sad indeed!
Especially, when the Shark in question is the 41st ever seen Megamouth Shark! Caught near Donsol, Philippines, and then quickly turned into a Bicol style feast. Right under the nose of the local WWF representative who pleaded with them not to do it!

That sure sucks!
But should we all gnash our teeth and proceed with indiscriminate finger pointing and condemnation, like the majority of the media and the bloggers have chosen to do?
Frankly, I'm on the fence on this one.

From what I understand, "fishermen trawling for mackerel" accidentally caught the Shark that died in their net. They then brought it back to shore for an "assessment" that was effected by the WWF.
Did you spot anything improper so far?

What I miss, is some explanation as to what the WWF wanted to do next.
Schlepp the 1,000-pund, 13-foot carcass to some scientific institution? For what: DNA and tissue analysis, for which they could have taken a sample in situ? Or oblige them to follow Fisheries Administrative Order 208 that "provides that after documentation, the carcass of all endangered marine animals should promptly be buried"?
And, did they offer some compensation for foregoing a welcome and serendipitous meal of 500 kilos of protein? That's a lot of Kinunot feeding a lot of people!

Why I'm playing advocatus diaboli, is that this touches on several topics that defy the black-or-white judgments we all-to-often apply. When it comes to Conservation, here's what I believe.

• The root cause of all our problems is that there is too many people striving for ever more Lebensraum and quality of life. Alas, that's a fact of life and whilst preserving our idealism, we must propose solutions and not just engage in vocal condemnation. Also, the solutions we offer need to be pragmatic and based on our willingness to compromise.
• Conservation must ultimately address the issue of poverty. Meaning that when dealing with poor, Third World countries, it's just not good enough to issue regulations ex cathedra. There is a need to provide for compensation or for showing viable alternatives.
• Assuming that it is OK to eat animals, the alternative to harvesting wildlife is to breed domesticates. Typically, that implies clearing native land for pastures and in order to grow animal feed. Ultimately, that may well entail far worse consequences for the Environment.
• People of different Cultures may eat whatever they please. If that implies the killing of animals and especially, the harvesting of wildlife, it must however happen in a sustainable, and ethical way.
• Ethically speaking, all Life has the same value. If it's OK to kill and eat Pigs, Chicken and Tuna, it's equally OK to eat Dogs, Cats - and Sharks! And Whales, too! Once again, to me, the only discriminating factor here is sustainability. Rat stew anybody?

Yes, it's complicated!

With that in mind, was cooking an accidentally caught, rare Shark really such a crime?