Scientists Are Searching Through Fish Markets To Study Rare Sharks

Marine biologists are combing fish markets around the world to study what comes up in the nets, and sometimes the catch is full of surprises Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/study-rare-sharks-fish-markets

Some interesting stuff here.

There's a lot there but this quote about commercial sharking says a lot:

“It’s a huge issue because it’s almost certainly unsustainable,” Booth says, but adds that it isn’t always easy to stop or regulate shark fishing because the practice can be an important source of income for many poor coastal communities.

It's the same story around the globe. Money first, fishery last.

Nice read. Wonder if NMFS wonks caught this snippet?

Jabado points out that it’s important to balance data from landing sites with research on actual living sharks in the wild whenever possible. But the markets still provide an invaluable resource for researchers.

“You would need thousands of staff members to go out every day and use different survey methods in the ocean in hundreds of different locations just to cover the area that fishing usually covers,” Spaet says. “And you need to do this over many centuries, basically, to get the same information that these fishermen have. It’s just not possible to do that as a researcher.”


Wasn't the Coelacanth "rediscovered" in an African fish market in the late 1930s? Seems like a good place for ichthyologists...

Wasn't the Coelacanth "rediscovered" in an African fish market in the late 1930s? Seems like a good place for ichthyologists...

Not sure exactly when it was, but I believe you recorrect in the methodology of how it was rediscovered.

“You would need thousands of staff members to go out every day and use different survey methods in the ocean in hundreds of different locations just to cover the area that fishing usually covers,” Spaet says. “And you need to do this over many centuries, basically, to get the same information that these fishermen have. It’s just not possible to do that as a researcher.”

That is not true, all you would really need is an accurate and mandatory reporting system, which we already have here in the U.S.