The Shark Crisis: A Case for a Ban on Shark Fishing in the United States
In recent years, stunning new research has revealed a steep long-term decline in shark populations, both in domestic and international waters. A landmark 2021 study found that, over the past century, global shark abundance fell by more than 70%, primarily due to overfishing. Researchers have documented marked population reductions throughout the world's oceans and, to a lesser extent, closer to home in U.S. waters. Ecologically and economically, this global shark crisis is immensely concerning. Sharks are essential to the health of marine ecosystems, and their decline threatens to have a devastating impact on worldwide fisheries and tourism.
On Jan. 1, 2022, the state of Hawaii took an enormously symbolic move in response to this crisis, becoming the first U.S. state to ban shark fishing. The law, enacted by the Hawaii State Legislature last June, outlaws the intentional capture, entangling, or killing of sharks in state waters. While the Hawaiian ban on shark fishing is unlikely to have an enormous impact alone—the state already has an exemplary shark conservation program—considering the dire situation globally, it sets a critical precedent.
A nationwide ban on shark fishing, though, admittedly, also somewhat limited in potential impact, ought to be the next step. It would be relatively feasible for Congress to pass legislation banning shark fishing as a preliminary conservation measure. Moreover, such a ban would yield tangible results and hopefully set the stage for further action worldwide. The global shark crisis demands immediate action. Congress should pass a ban on shark fishing in the U.S. as a symbolic first step to acknowledging the current alarming situation and beginning to establish an innovative global conservation framework for sharks.
Most people reading this post will probably have heard that sharks have more to fear from humans than we do from them. In all likelihood, today, pretty much all reasonably well-informed people understand, at least on a superficial level, that the image of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters popularized by Jaws is overblown. However, popular imagination still paints sharks as deadly sea monsters, even if they are increasingly known as misunderstood. A conservation-focused perspective on sharks continues to lose out to portrayals emphasizing the danger sharks pose in media and everyday conversations. That is not to say that a fear of sharks is entirely irrational. But the way we generally talk about sharks obscures a simple fact: Humans are decimating them in astounding numbers.
As mentioned above, over the past 50 years, sharks have declined by more than 70% worldwide. That percentage is stunning, but perhaps even more staggering is the enormous number of sharks killed by humans each year. Standard estimates suggest that humans kill about 100 million sharks annually, out of the more than a billion sharks worldwide, well above the recovery rate for shark populations. Contrast that staggering figure with the annual number of shark-related human fatalities, 11 globally in 2021, and it becomes apparent that sharks face massive PR issues obscuring their dreadful conservation status.
Notwithstanding how the public views sharks, one might wonder: Why should we even care about sharks enough to ban fishing them? Though perhaps a bit cruel-minded—after all, we are talking about the deaths of millions of animals each year—it is a reasonable question. It seems so many awful things happen worldwide, especially these days. Why would it be so significant if humans eliminated sharks from the ocean?
The answer involves both ecology and economics.
For one, sharks are vital to ocean ecosystems. Scientists consider sharks a keystone species, meaning that, without sharks, many marine ecosystems could potentially collapse. By eating down the food chain, essentially exercising spatial control over the species below them, sharks ensure that the whole ecosystem stays healthy (like the circle of life in the Lion King). The presence of tiger sharks in seagrass meadows, for instance, scares away sea turtles, dugongs (sea cows), and other species from overgrazing on the seagrass. If tiger sharks disappeared from seagrass meadows, the delicate predator-prey balance that maintains the food chain in the ecosystem could collapse. And that is true not only in seagrass meadows but also for numerous other marine ecosystems.
The potential economic impact of sharks disappearing could be similarly immense. First, because sharks are essential to the health of ocean ecosystems, they play a critical, often underappreciated role in maintaining worldwide fisheries. Considering that global seafood production has quadrupled in the past 50 years and people in many lower-income countries remain dependent on subsistence fishing, the potentially destructive effects on the fishing industry of humans eliminating sharks from the ocean would be enormous. Second, increasingly, sharks bring valuable eco-tourism dollars to communities, dollars now threatened. Research indicates that the repeated tourism benefits of a live shark—maintaining marine ecosystems, attracting shark-watching tourists, etc.—are ultimately worth far more than the price of one killed.
So, economically and ecologically, the global shark crisis is worrying. The subsequent questions, then, are as follows. How would a ban on shark fishing in the U.S. help? It is all good and well to identify a crisis, but how would this particular solution work to remedy the problem?
On the surface, in all honesty, outlawing shark fishing in the U.S. may seem an empty effort to some. The main culprit behind the current shark crisis is overfishing, intentionally and unintentionally targeting sharks. However, neither of the two fishing practices most responsible for the global crisis, one intentionally targeting sharks and the other doing so unintentionally, would be explicitly targeted by a U.S. ban on shark fishing. Crucially, though, such a ban would indirectly combat these practices in U.S. waters and, even more importantly, worldwide.
The intentional practice is shark finning, illegal in the U.S. but prevalent around the globe. Finning is a cruel practice in which fisherpeople cut off a shark's valuable fins for use in shark fin soup, a delicacy in China, and then throw it, still alive, back into the ocean to slowly writhe to death. Since Congress passed the Shark Finning Prohibition Act in 2000, finning has been illegal in U.S. waters. Nevertheless, fins continue to be illegally obtained in U.S. waters and transported from other locations worldwide into the U.S. A nationwide ban on shark fishing would help fight illegal shark finning by restricting access to sharks in the first place. Moreover, in conjunction with a bill currently moving through Congress to eliminate U.S. shark fin sales, it would send a strong message in favor of limiting the appalling practice globally.
The unintentional practice is indiscriminate modern fishing methods such as trawling, which involves dragging a fishing net through the water behind a boat, allowing fishing boats to catch massive amounts of fish. While effective, these methods also result in the death of sharks and other sea life as bycatch. In U.S. waters and worldwide, shark bycatch is a tremendous problem. Research on North Atlantic fisheries, including U.S. waters, has found that the number of sharks caught as bycatch, many of which die, often exceeds the number of targeted species caught. A ban on shark fishing in the U.S. would not intentionally target this practice. For now, it would likely be politically challenging and ill-advised because of the economic significance of fisheries to target these effective fishing methods. By encouraging fishing boats to release sharks that survive being caught as bycatch and raising awareness about the plight of sharks, though, a shark fishing ban could help reduce the impact of indiscriminate modern fishing methods in U.S. waters.
Therefore, while perhaps outwardly ineffectual regarding shark finning and indiscriminate modern fishing methods, outlawing shark fishing in the U.S. would likely achieve some positive change in these areas. Additionally, to some extent, a nationwide ban on shark fishing would have tangible positive direct effects. Recreational fishing, especially on the East Coast of the U.S., is a small but legitimate part of the problem. Annually, people fishing recreationally in U.S. waters kill more than 100,000 sharks. Many of the sharks caught in the U.S. are released, but even catch-and-release can often kill, as fishing stress causes many sharks to die even if they are released. Banning shark fishing in the U.S. would avoid these needless shark deaths, not necessarily enormously large in numbers on their own but significant in light of the global shark crisis.
Such a ban is not a solution to the global shark crisis—far from it. It is a politically feasible preliminary step, though. The example provided by Hawaii shows that it is possible today to enact a ban on shark fishing. Now, that does not mean it will be easy. Recreational shark fishing is a growing activity in the U.S., with passionate participants who would strongly lobby against a ban. And as previously mentioned in discussing prevailing perceptions of sharks, the shark crisis is not necessarily an immediate priority in the minds of most voters and politicians. As a first step, though, it will be possible to achieve. Changing commercial fishing practices and achieving global change will take longer-term efforts. But banning shark fishing in the U.S. can be done right now. We have to start somewhere—Congress should pass a ban on shark fishing in the U.S.
“Great White Shark Near The Boat” by Tim Sheerman-Chase is marked with CC BY 2.0.