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100 Years of Data Reveals Why Sharks Keep Stealing Your Catch · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Picture this.
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  You feel the strike.
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  The rod loads up, line screaming, drag singing, and for a few
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  seconds, you're winning.
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  Then the rod goes light, you reel up fast, and what comes over the gunwale is a head.
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  Just a head.
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  Clean bite behind the gills.
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  Sometimes not even that, sometimes just the bare hook and a story n- that
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  nobody at the dock is going to believe.
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  If you fish the Atlantic Coast, you will already know this feeling.
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  And if you love the ocean, you need to understand what it means, because the fish
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  that never made it to the boat is quietly turning some of the ocean's biggest fans
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  against one of the most important animals.
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  Today, we are talking about shark depredation and a brand-new study
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  that looked back at a hundred years to figure out why this is happening now.
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  If you don't know what shark depredation is, essentially
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  it's sharks eating the fish.
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  So it's like sharks competing with anglers and fishing.
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  So it's quite an interesting way of looking at things, and we're
• 1:00
  gonna talk more about it today.
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  But this is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, and I'm Andrew Lewin.
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  Every weekday, I take one ocean story and hand you one thing
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  you can actually do about it.
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  No doom for the sake of doom, just what is happening, why it
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  matters, and where you fit in.
• 1:15
  If that's your kind of thing, hit that follow button right now
• 1:17
  so you don't miss an episode.
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  I post every Monday to Friday.
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  It's the easiest way to help this show grow.
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  Now, here's the question I want to sit with today.
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  What if the thing that is frustrating anglers all along the coast is actually
• 1:28
  a sign that we did something right?
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  Because that is the strange knot at the center of the story.
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  Shark depredation is going up.
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  Anglers are angry, and a lot of them are pointing at shark conservation
• 1:40
  as the villain, believe it or not.
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  A new scientific study published in June in the ICES Journal of Marine
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  Science, decided to test the idea by doing something nobody had done before.
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  They tracked one hundred years of shark depredation across the entire
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  Atlantic Coast from Maine all the way down to Texas and the US Caribbean.
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  What they found is going to reframe how you think of every one of those bite offs.
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  So let's get into it.
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  Now, here's part one of the main story.
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  What is actually happening on the water?
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  First, the word depredation.
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  It sounds technical, but it's simple.
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  Depredation is when a shark bites or steals a fish you've already hooked
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  before you can get it into the boat.
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  You did the work.
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  You found the fish.
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  You set the hook.
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  You started the fight, and a shark collects the paycheck.
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  This has happened to me once before in the Gulf of Mexico.
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  It's quite frustrating.
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  This is not new.
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  Fishermen have dealt with it for generations.
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  Ernest Hemingway built an entire novel around it back in 1952.
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  But the anger around it now is real, and it is growing.
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  And that is what sent this team of scientists digging.
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  The study was led by Dr.
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  Marcus Drymon at Mississippi State University, working with NOAA
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  Fisheries and a group of regional experts and graduate students.
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  And here's why it matters.
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  This is the first time all these regional specialties pooled their
• 2:53
  knowledge into one coast-wide picture.
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  Before this, everyone had their own local piece of the puzzle.
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  Nobody had the whole board.
• 3:01
  So what does the whole board look like?
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  It is bigger and messier than anyone ever expected.
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  The team documented at least fifty-one different fish stocks that anglers
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  target getting hit by depredation.
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  And on the other side of that equation, twenty-two different species
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  of shark doing the depredation.
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  That's a lot of species.
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  Fifty-one target fish, twenty-two target species.
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  That is not a single problem.
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  That's dozens of problems wearing the same coat.
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  And the two sharks showing up most often, bull sharks and sandbar sharks.
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  Hold on to those two names because they are going to matter in just a minute.
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  One of them you're allowed to keep, one of them you're not, and that difference
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  is a big part of this whole tangled mess.
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  Dr. Drymon put it plainly.
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  He said, "At its core, this is about overlap, overlap between people
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  and wildlife, both reaching for the same fish at the same time."
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  And if you want to understand why the overlap is growing, you have to look at
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  what has been happening to the sharks.
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  Part two, why now?
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  The recovery nobody talks about.
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  Here's the part that most people miss.
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  Let's go back to the 1980s and early 1990s.
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  Atlantic shark populations were getting hammered.
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  Overfishing, finning, almost no rules.
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  Some coastal species were pushing way, way down.
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  Sandbar sharks, the exact species now showing up in these bite-offs,
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  were among the hardest hit.
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  So in 1993, the United States put its first real shark
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  management plan into place.
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  Quotas, limits, protections.
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  Over the following years, it got stronger.
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  Finning bans, species put completely off limits.
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  And then something remarkable happened.
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  It actually worked.
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  Imagine, you put policies together and it actually worked.
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  A 2023 study in the Journal of PNAS looked at coastal shark populations
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  before and after that 1993 plan.
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  It found nine wide-ranging coastal shark species recovering
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  after decades of decline.
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  The researchers were direct about the cause.
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  Well-enforced management and science-based limits prevented population
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  collapses that were otherwise coming.
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  NOAA's own surveys tell the same story.
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  Dusky sharks, sandbar sharks, even white sharks are turning
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  up more often than they used to.
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  And the sandbar sharks specifically, the directed fishery
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  for them was shut down in 2008.
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  Anglers cannot keep one today.
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  They're still officially rebuilding on a plan that stretches all the way to
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  the year 2070, but the trend is up.
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  Now, put those two facts side by side.
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  More sharks in the water, and more anglers on the water than ever, reeling in fish.
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  More sharks plus more lines equals more overlap.
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  More overlap equals more stolen fish.
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  The depredation is not proof that conservation failed.
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  In a lot of cases, it is the shadow cast by conservation working.
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  And the numbers around it is eye-opening.
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  One major review of global research found depredation rates ranging
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  anywhere from about 1% of the catch on the low end to more than a quarter
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  of your catch on the high end, depending on where and how you fish.
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  A national angler survey out of 2022 found that more than
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  three-quarters of anglers said that they had experienced depredation,
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  with Florida as a major hotspot.
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  But here's a detail that really stopped me.
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  That same research estimated that nearly 80% of the depredation happens unseen.
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  You never watch the shark do it.
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  You just feel the line go slack and reel up the evidence, which means
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  that most of the time, the angler is left to guess who the culprit was,
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  and guesses, especially angry ones, are not always fair to the animal.
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  Part three: The problem hiding underneath.
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  So far, this might sound like a frustrating story.
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  Annoying, sure, but is it really an ocean problem?
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  Yes, and this is the part I most want you to hear.
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  When a shark eats your hooked fish, that fish is still dead.
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  It still came out of the population, but it never gets counted.
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  In fishery science, that is what they call dead discard, a fish that died
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  but never showed up on the logbook.
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  The NOAA study flagged this directly.
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  Depredated fish are effectively dead discards that are not well documented.
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  And in some cases, that unaccounted mortality could throw off the
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  stock assessments we use to manage those fish in the first place.
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  Read that again.
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  The bite-offs are not just costing anglers a fish and a bad afternoon.
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  They are creating a blind spot in the data we use to keep
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  those fish populations healthy.
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  That is an ocean problem.
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  That is a management problem.
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  That is everybody's problem.
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  And here's the hard truth the researchers landed on.
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  There is no simple fix.
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  Fifty-one targeted species, twenty-two shark species, every one of them
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  managed by different rules in different states and federal waters.
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  Bull sharks can be harvested.
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  Sandbar sharks cannot.
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  There is no one solution that works across all of it.
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  What the scientists recommend instead is a combination.
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  Keep testing shark deterrent devices.
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  Keep the sustainable shark fisheries we do have running smartly.
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  And above all, keep scientists, fishermen, and managers talking to
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  each other instead of past each other.
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  Because the alternative, the bumper sticker solution of just killing more
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  sharks, would quietly unravel one of the few big marine conservation
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  wins this country already has.
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  Quick pause.
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  If this episode is connecting the dots for you, do me one favor.
• 7:58
  Share it with the person who fishes.
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  Just one.
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  This is the exact kind of story that gets flattened into
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  sharks bad at the boat ramp.
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  And you passing it along is how the fuller picture actually travels.
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  Okay, let's talk about what you can do now.
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  Here's the takeaway I want you to carry off the water.
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  Shark depredation is real.
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  The frustration is legitimate.
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  Nobody is asking anglers to smile while sharks eat their dinner.
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  But the story underneath it is a conservation success story
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  wearing an inconvenient disguise.
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  Sharks are bad, and the goal now is not to reverse that, is to
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  learn how to share the water.
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  So here's where you come in.
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  Same day, real and honest about what you can do and cannot do.
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  If you are an angler, scientist points to a handful of small moves that add up.
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  Move spots more often instead of grinding one honey hole where
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  the sharks have learned to wait.
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  Get your fish up faster when you can, so there's little
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  time for the shark to close in.
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  Try lures or jigs instead of soaking bait, since less scent in the
• 8:51
  water means less of an invitation.
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  And stop dumping fish waste right where you're fishing.
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  None of this is a magic switch, of course, but researchers who study
• 8:59
  this are clear that stacked together they can add up to a drop in bite offs.
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  You can also test a deterrent with clear eyes.
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  Some electrical and magnetic devices have shown real promise in field trials,
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  buying you extra seconds to land a fish.
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  Others on the market have almost no independent evidence behind them.
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  So treat the flaky marketing claims with a healthy dose of skepticism, and look
• 9:19
  for actual testing before you spend.
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  And whether or not you fish, the biggest thing that you can do
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  is protect the story yourself.
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  The next time you hear someone at the dock or someone in the comment section
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  say the answer is just to cull the sharks, you now know enough to gently push back.
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  You can say that, "The sharks coming back is a win. The bite-offs are a management
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  puzzle, not a reason to undo decades of recovery." And one more, if you
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  fish and you get depredated, report it.
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  NOAA and its partners are actively building better ways to
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  log these events, because right now, most of them vanish unseen.
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  Your report helps turn the 80% of the invisible bite-offs into real data,
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  and better data is what keeps both the fish and the sharks managed honestly.
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  And that is the whole idea.
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  You do not have to choose between healthy fisheries and healthy shark populations.
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  The science says you can have both, but only if we stay at the table together.
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  That's the episode.
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  If you got something out of it, follow the show wherever you're listening, and
• 10:12
  share it with one of your angler friends.
• 10:14
  I read the messages, so if you've felt depredation firsthand, tell me your story.
• 10:17
  Hit me up on the social media links in the show notes, and I
• 10:20
  might read on a future episode.
• 10:22
  But that's it for today's episode.
• 10:23
  If you wanna support the podcast, please, do so by going
• 10:27
  to speakupforblue.com/patreon.
• 10:29
  You can support me on Patreon by going to
• 10:34
  I'd love your support.
• 10:35
  I do a lot of work on this, and the podcast, YouTube channels,
• 10:38
  all social medias like TikTok and Instagram and Facebook.
• 10:41
  If you feel like you wanna support and you're in the area to support,
• 10:44
  I would love for you to support.
• 10:46
  And join a community of people who wanna get together and talk about the ocean.
• 10:51
  That's it for today's episode.
• 10:52
  Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
• 10:57
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.