Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Michael Tucker, International Conservation Intern

Whenever someone says the word “shark,” the great white from Jaws usually swims to mind. Unfortunately many shark species, the majority of which are harmless to humans, have paid the ultimate price for their more famous movie brethren. The porbeagle shark, an inhabitant of the colder waters of the Atlantic Ocean and a cousin of the great white, is one of those species in desperate need of assistance before it disappears from our planet’s oceans forever.

Porbeagle shark (c)NMFS

What is a Porbeagle?
Lamna nasus, also known as the porbeagle, is a relatively common shark found in the waters between Great Britain and Canada, ranging from shorelines to depths of up to 4,462 feet. The porbeagle is a stout-bodied shark with a pointed nose and a unique white spot on the rear of the dorsal fin. Like its larger cousin the great white, the porbeagle has a dual-shaded body to help it hunt fish from below and above. These sharks are also one of the only species of shark in the world that like to play — they have been found off of the Cornish coast rolling in kelp and pushing buoys around for no reason other than entertainment.

What’s the Problem?
Porbeagle sharks breed slowly and only give birth to one or two pups a year, so any significant damage done to the population takes a long time to fix. It has been estimated that it takes close to 14 years for a population to recover from excessive fishing. Porbeagles were a favorite target for fishing vessels from the 1950s to the 1990s for shark steaks until strict fishing laws were implemented during the late 1990s in order to save the species from overfishing. Although fishing for porbeagles still occurs in the northwestern Atlantic, studies have shown that the number of porbeagles landed in Europe has declined in the past 20 years.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the porbeagle is listed as globally vulnerable, critically endangered in the northwest Atlantic, endangered in the northeast, and near threatened in the southern Atlantic. In both 2007 and 2010, proposals to regulate the trade of  the species were presented by the European Union at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), but fishing interests successfully blocked the proposals each time.

You Can Help!
For the past couple CITES meetings, Defenders has been helping garner support for a new chance at getting additional international regulations for porbeagles and other shark species to better protect them against overharvesting. Brazil, Comoros, Croatia, the European Union and Egypt will all be sponsoring the porbeagle proposal, and we’ll be at the upcoming CITES conference meeting with the delegates and advocating for the proposal. We are hoping that this time the Parties to the Convention will recognize the dire need for international cooperation to protect porbeagle sharks.  Last time, at the 2010 meeting, the porbeagle proposal lost by just a single vote! We are turning now to Panama, who could cast the decisive vote on this proposal and others like it designed to gain new protections for hammerhead and oceanic whitetip sharks. Click here to send a letter asking the President of Panama to support shark conservation at this year’s CITES conference!

Michael Tucker, International Conservation Intern

The oceanic whitetip was once considered the most abundant species of sharks on the planet. But now, due largely to overfishing, it has become one of the most threatened. A member of the same family as the bull shark, sandbar shark, and blacktip shark, the oceanic whitetip is highly migratory. It lives in warm seas, and is capable of bearing live young. Unfortunately for the oceanic whitetip, they do not breed fast enough to counteract the vast overfishing of the species which has occurred over the past 60 years.

What’s the Problem?

Oceanic whitetip shark (©Peter Koelbl)

For years, biologists have seen oceanic whitetip populations decline. In 2006, the IUCN designated the species as threatened. While the global population is difficult to know for certain, it is estimated that their population decreased almost 70 percent globally between 1992 and 2000, and is continuing to go down every day. Along the Gulf of Mexico, records from the 1950s compared to those from the 1990s show a shocking population decrease in oceanic whitetip shark population of 98 percent!

Catching and finning sharks has become much more popular throughout many Asian countries in the past several years. And around 30 percent of all the sharks brought in by these fishing vessels is oceanic whitetip sharks! The reason whitetips are so vulnerable to this practice  is that they tend to follow ships, seeking food dropped off the sides. This allows them to easily be trapped in the large nets dragged behind finning vessels. Each shark fin sells for around $80 to the restaurants that use them for shark fin soup. Unfortunately, that means they won’t stop anytime soon without a very good reason to cut back. Roughly 73 million sharks of various species are killed each year to make shark fin soup.

Bycatch is another massive problem facing sharks. Longline cables, drag nets and other means of catching larger fish such as tuna end up snagging other creatures as well, including the oceanic whitetip. These sharks are then thrown back into the ocean too weak to swim from being strung up for hours or even days, caught on a hook not intended for them. Without the strength to swim away, these sharks often drown or find themselves victims of other scavengers who follow these boats. Oceanic whitetips make up just over 20 percent of the sharks caught on these longlines in the Pacific Ocean. With so many oceanic whitetips killed each year, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to repopulate fast enough to balance out the numbers.

What Can We Do?
One of the best steps we can take to protect oceanic whitetips is to have them listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES. Being listed under CITES would mean that  international trade in the fins and other parts of sharks would be closely monitored and regulated to make sure that the species would not be threatened with extinction. Given that one of the largest threats to the species is due to trade, regulation could make a huge difference.

For several years now, many Latin American countries have been leading proposals to CITES about expanding protection for sharks. In the upcoming March 2013 CITES meeting in Thailand, the United States, along with Brazil and Colombia, will cosponsor the proposal to list the oceanic whitetip shark under CITES Appendix II. The United States will cosponsor the proposal, and Defenders of Wildlife has been collecting data and preparing materials on the oceanic whitetip to help our cosponsor countries prepare for it. If the proposal is approved, all countries involved in the international shark fin trade will be required to get a permit in order to import the sharks or their fins, and regulations will only allow for a sustainable harvest. If it passes, this will be a great step toward curbing the uncontrolled harvest and trade of sharks for their fins, and will help save a species worth keeping for future generations.

Juan Carlos Cantu, Mexico Program Manager

An incredible animal with an incredible story, the Pacific loggerhead sea turtle will face many challenges throughout its life. From the day it is born, it enters the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean and travels thousands of lonely miles as it struggles to reach adulthood, return to the place it was born and continue the circle of life. Despite the perils of such a journey, the most severe threat these animals now face is humans.

Loggerhead Sea Turtle Hatchling (NPS)

The Northern Pacific loggerhead sea turtle nests on the coasts of Japan, where it can lay approximately 95 to 150 eggs. After 56 to 80 days, the nestlings hatch and enter the cold Japanese waters to start one of the most amazing journeys of any living species. Their goal is to cross the Pacific Ocean to arrive at the rich feeding grounds off the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur in Mexico. The origins of this migration are a mystery, but the reality is that these small loggerhead sea turtles must travel 7,500 miles of open sea to reach their destination. This is an immense body of water for the little turtles to swim, and the trip can take up to six years. By the time they arrive in Baja, those that survive are no longer small hatchlings, but fairly large juveniles. They spend the next 10 years in Mexican waters, where they feed mostly on crustaceans called pelagic red crabs in a relatively small area in front of the Bay of Ulloa.

Slow to grow and mature, even at 15 to 20 years of age, loggerheads are still considered subadults when they begin their journey back across the Pacific. They will roam the Northern Pacific until they reach their reproductive age, then swim back to the beaches in Japan where they were born and start a new cycle of nesting. The round trip takes decades to complete, and the adult sea turtles will never leave these waters to traverse the Pacific Ocean again.

Unfortunately, the number of nesting females in Japan has decreased by 90 percent in the past three generations, which qualifies this loggerhead population as critically endangered. The main culprit is “bycatch” — the unintentional capture of sea  turtles in fisheries.

Fishing nets (Credit: Garry Knight)

In the waters off Japan, loggerhead sea turtles fall prey to massive nets, while in the open ocean the threat comes from the international longline fleet, which consists of fishing lines dozens of miles long, each with thousands of hanging hooks. Drift net fisheries (huge, miles-long nets that capture everything in their path) and gillnet fishers in the Pacific also have high bycatch of loggerheads. The National Marine Fisheries Service has noted that just 37 to 92 North Pacific loggerheads killed each year through bycatch would increase the species’ risk of extinction. In Mexico, these sea turtles are even more vulnerable to bycatch because they gather in such small areas to feed. Coastal fisheries in Baja, which mainly target shark and halibut, are capturing a staggering 1,000 loggerheads every year.

For years, teams of NGOs and scientists tried to convince fishermen to use alternative fishing gear and modify their fishing practices. Defenders of Wildlife helped this effort by producing materials like posters and even comic books with information on how to help sea turtles. Eventually these efforts started to pay off — fishermen were changing their fishing practices voluntarily, and bycatch was being reduced. Unfortunately, a recent seasonal ban on shark fishing prompted fishermen to start using their old methods on other species to increase their total catch, and as a result, bycatch has skyrocketed.

Bycatch alone is not illegal because it is not intentional. The problem here in Mexico is that the loggerheads’ feeding areas have little protection, and there are no regulations that mandate the use of alternative fishing gear or practices to reduce bycatch or in any way limit the number of sea turtles that can legally be caught as bycatch. For years, we worked to develop shark fishery regulations that include provisions to decrease sea turtle bycatch in Mexican waters, and in 2007, these were finally published in the official register. These regulations included a ban on drift nets and all surface nets, as well as mandatory use of circle hooks in surface longlines, which have been shown to be very successful in decreasing sea turtle bycatch and mortality. These efforts have helped, but since many Baja coastal fisheries use bottom-set longlines and gillnets, which invariably drown sea turtles, it has not been enough.

Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Photo: NOAA)

At the same time, Defenders joined an effort by local and international NGOs and research scientists to request that the Environment Ministry create a refuge area to protect loggerheads in their feeding grounds. For the past five years, environmental authorities have dragged their feet on this issue, with never-ending stakeholder meetings that resulted in no protected area, and no regulation of the different types of coastal fisheries that are negatively impacting the loggerhead population. This year, bycatch increased by 600 percent, making it the highest bycatch rate of loggerheads in the world.

We have denounced this unnecessary mass mortality, publicly demanding that government institutions, which are obliged by law to protect endangered species, take action immediately to put a stop to this loggerhead massacre. The response from the authorities was swift, promising to increase vigilance of fishery activities as well as confirming that a draft refuge area decree is in the works, but we haven’t seen anything yet.

On December 1st, a completely new administration took over, and we are hopeful that this may be the break loggerhead turtles need to finally get some real protection in place. We’ll keep you posted on what happens, and we will not stop until the North Pacific loggerhead population in Mexican waters has the protection it needs to survive.

Mary Beth Beetham, Director of Legislative Affairs

Wildlife faces escalating criminal threats both domestically and internationally, including illicit trade, unlawful commercial exploitation, illegal destruction of habitat and industrial hazards. Illegal wildlife trade is also related to our national security, with a well-documented link between wildlife smuggling and both organized crime and drug trafficking. Wildlife trade ranks third in monetary importance, just after drug and arms trade. The U.S. supports one of the largest markets after China for both legal and illegal wildlife and wildlife products, including tigers, caviar, coral, snakes, timber, elephant ivory, sea turtles, live birds and numerous species native to the U.S.

An inspector checks a shipment of dried frogs coming into the country. (Credit: Bill Butcher/USFWS)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Office of Law Enforcement maintains a thin green line of protection for wildlife, both here at home and globally. The office investigates wildlife crimes, enforces regulation of wildlife trade, helps citizens comply with the law and works with other international and U.S. government entities to carry out its mission through wildlife inspectors, special agents and a forensics laboratory. If destructive funding cuts are triggered by the fiscal cliff or an overall budget agreement, all this protection could vanish.

On the Front Line at Ports
The office’s 143 wildlife inspectors are the front line of defense in nearly 40 ports of entry around the country, including in Alaska, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Texas and Washington. In 2011, they processed about 179,000 declared shipments of wildlife and wildlife products worth more than $2.8 billion, making sure that the shipments did not contain any animals or products that are protected against trade. Even with current funding, the number of inspectors is inadequate to provide full 24-hour coverage at ports, and can only inspect samples of larger mail shipments, or randomly select particular shipments for inspection. This means that many shipments go through with no inspection at all.

Wildlife Investigators
The 222 special agents that work for the Office of Law Enforcement are expert investigators that work, sometimes even going undercover, to break up smuggling rings, stop commercial exploitation of protected U.S. species, and work with states to protect U.S. game species from poaching, which steals both state income and hunting and fishing opportunities. In 2011, special agents investigated more than 13,000 cases.

Evidence gathered during Operation Crash. (Credit: USFWS)

CSI Wildlife
The Office of Law Enforcement also oversees the FWS Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, a real life “CSI Wildlife,” and the only such laboratory in the world dedicated to solving wildlife crimes. Before the lab was established in 1988, law enforcement officers had little or no ability to receive expert wildlife laboratory services in pursuing criminals. Now the lab identifies the species or parts of the animals being exploited, determines the cause of death, decides if a crime has occurred, and uses the evidence to link suspect, victim and crime scene.

Once a crime against wildlife is verified, the FWS Office of Law Enforcement works with other federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice and sometimes state agencies, to pursue it in court. Here are just a few examples of cases that the office has investigated and prosecuted in recent years — crimes that could otherwise have gone unpunished:

• “Operation Crash” was a nationwide Fish and Wildlife Service crackdown on those involved in the black market trade of endangered rhino horns — more than 450 rhinos have been killed this year alone.
• Agents seized one ton of smuggled elephant ivory from a Philadelphia art store — one of the largest seizures of elephant ivory on record.
• In Washington State, the office investigated the destruction of more than 400 bank swallow nests and over 3,000 eggs during the 2010 nesting season.
• In Texas, they looked into the illegal harvest of alligator gar, an important sport fish, which was then being sold in Japan.
• The office prosecuted the largest deer poaching case in Kansas history, an operation that led up to 60 clients to illegally kill about 160 deer.
• The office intervened when bald and golden eagles were being killed and sold in Washington — during their investigation, agents seized 57 bald and golden eagle tails and 52 golden eagle wings.
• An inquiry found that endangered pallid sturgeon were being illegally harvested for caviar in the Mississippi, Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.
• The office undertook a multi-year undercover investigation of unlawful international trafficking in sea turtle parts and products.
• Agents uncovered more than 40 tons of endangered coral being smuggled into the port of Portland, Oregon.
• An investigation found that jaguar skins were being smuggled and sold in Florida, Texas and elsewhere by e-commerce.
• Work of the agents and the forensics lab resulted in successful prosecution and sentencing for the intentional killing of an endangered Florida panther.
• They discovered that wild-caught turtles were being illegally shipped to China from Florida.
• A three-year investigation uncovered the unlawful trafficking of Arizona state-protected reptiles.

The Office of Law Enforcement is already severely underfunded, making it a challenge to meet the rapidly escalating threats to wildlife in the U.S. and around the world. Any further cuts will hinder these crucial enforcement efforts even more. Please tell your members of Congress that you support a balanced approach to address the budget deficit — one that does not include further cuts to important and beneficial wildlife conservation programs.

Juan Carlos Cantu, Mexico Programs Manager

A basking shark, one of only three shark species protected internationally (Photo: Greg Skomal/NOAA Fisheries Service)

Since 2002, Defenders of Wildlife has been working to get international protection for shark species by having them listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, known more commonly as CITES. This convention can create international rules to regulate the trade of certain endangered species, or to forbid that trade altogether. For sharks, which are being decimated by the international shark fin trade, being listed under CITES could mean an unprecedented level of protection. Unfortunately, most fishery authorities in the world just don’t want international trade of shark products regulated — especially the fin trade. Pressure from those authorities has made it very difficult to get a CITES listing for sharks. Only three species out of the known 468 have been listed so far: the great white shark, the whale shark and the basking shark.

At the 2010 CITES meeting, three shark proposals failed. Although most countries voted in favor, Japan and China were able to scare or buy enough votes to block the proposals, which would have provided protection for three hammerhead species, as well as sandbar, dusky, oceanic white tip, porbeagle and spiny dogfish sharks. And CITES meetings only occur every two to three years, so if you don’t succeed at one meeting, it can take several years to get another chance for a species to be listed.

Last year, Alejandra Goyeneachea and I worked with the Species Survival Network (a coalition of 80 NGOs) to develop a proposal to list the scalloped hammerhead, smooth hammerhead and great hammerhead sharks at the 2013 CITES conference. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the scalloped and great hammerheads are endangered worldwide, and the smooth hammerhead is vulnerable. All three species are threatened by over-exploitation, bycatch, and illegal or unreported fishing. Because they are mostly coastal species, and easier targets for fishing, one of the most serious threats to their survival is that in many countries, sharks of all ages are captured — even pregnant females or the very young — which means the populations continue to decrease. Meanwhile, the shark fin trade has increased exponentially in the past decade, and hammerhead shark fins are some of the highest valued in the industry. The protection a CITES listing could provide these species in so many countries would give them a chance to recover from the damage the fin trade has done, and hopefully one day reverse it.

A scalloped hammerhead shark caught in a fishing net. (Photo ©Seawatch.org)

Once we had the proposal, we had to find a country to present it at the convention. We concentrated on South American countries, and Brazil agreed to lead and present the proposal. Brazilian shark experts acknowledged that their hammerhead shark populations are declining fast, and that international protection would be needed to help conserve them. Then we looked for cosponsors everywhere — the more we could get, the better the proposal’s chance of being approved. One by one, countries started to accept, including Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador. The European Union was difficult because it is made up of 27 countries, and several — like Italy, Spain and Greece — did not want to support it at first; but in the end, they agreed.

Then we set our sights on Mexico. We knew it would be hard because the fishery authorities in that country had sworn in several international meetings that they would not let any shark species be listed. They were even able to block Mexico from supporting any shark proposals in the last CITES meeting. We knew that we had the support of Mexico CITES management and scientific authorities, but they couldn’t override the fishery opposition. So we had to appeal to someone higher, and that meant going to the President.

It isn’t often that reaching out to a government at the presidential level can even work, much less be well received — these leaders have so much to deal with that conservation all too often takes a back seat to other issues. But we hoped that this time would be different. Through a small coalition of Mexican NGOs, we were able to get a letter to President Calderón conveying the request. And then we got a pleasant surprise. It turns out he is a scuba diver, who loves the sea and recognizes the importance of protecting its species. With just a day left to meet the CITES deadline for submission of proposals, President Calderón sent the letter confirming Mexico’s support directly to Brazil and the CITES Secretariat.

Great hammerhead sharks (Photo ©ColombiaTravel)

Earlier this month, the official list of the proposals for the 2013 convention was published and all our year-long work — talking to dozens of government officials, working with NGOs and scientists in so many countries — was worth it: Mexico is listed as a co-proponent of the hammerheads proposal. Mexico joins Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and Costa Rica in this proposal, making it the most supported proposal from the Latin American region in CITES history.

Alas, the hardest part of our job is just beginning. We now have to write and translate information on the shark trade and fisheries in the three official languages of CITES (English, Spanish and French) and distribute them to most of the 176 countries in CITES requesting their support to the hammerhead proposal, so that they have the best scientific and legal information available before they decide how to vote.

We’ll have constant meetings and telephone conferences with NGOs and CITES management and scientific authorities from all over the world before the March, 2013 CITES meeting in Thailand. And then, during the two-week meeting, we will do it all over again.

At the last CITES meeting, the hammerhead proposal lost by 10 votes. But we’re doing everything we can to make sure that this time, things will be different — and the result will be a victory for shark conservation.

by Daniel Thornhill

Ever gone to Google maps and used the “street view” feature to check out a new restaurant?  Or to see which side of the road an address was on?  Well, get ready to use Google maps in a whole new way.  Now you can view some of the most beautiful underwater landscapes on Earth, see fish species you never knew existed, and catch sea turtles napping amid beautiful corals.

Google has launched a new virtual photo tour of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the Seven Wonders of the World and the largest coral reef on the planet, as well as reefs in Hawaii and the Philippines.  The images were gathered for the Caitlin Seaview Survey, a global study of ocean and coral reef health.  There are currently 15,000 images, and by the time the mapping project ends in December, there’ll be about 50,000 available to view!

It used to be that only researchers like me had the opportunity to view and learn about so many different coral habitats and the species that depend on them.  Not anymore: now anyone with an internet connection can go to Google maps for an up-close and personal look at reef life in a growing collection of 360-degree panoramas. This is an unprecedented opportunity for conservation organizations like Defenders of Wildlife, to bring coral reef issues to the fore.

This reef at Dry Tortugas in the Florida Keys includes many different coral species and supports a myriad of fish, invertebrates and other animals. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

As a coral reef biologist, I’ve often needed to present the problems reefs face in an engaging way.  Visually documenting reefs is crucial to connecting them to the public.  While national parks and forests are accessible to everyone, coral reefs usually can only be seen in person by scuba divers.  The photos of the Great Barrier Reef and others are a “time-capsule” of the reef’s health.  Coral advocates can use them to educate people around the world, hopefully inspiring them to learn and care about coral reefs.

And coral conservation is more important than ever: climate change, pollution and other stressors are taking a toll on our planet’s reefs, as shown in these incredible “then and now” shots from Double Exposure, a photography site dedicated to showing how climate change alters our environment.  All too often, coral gardens that were vibrant and thriving 20 or 30 years ago are now pale and sparse.  Images are attention-grabbers, drawing viewers in and prompting the questions we researchers ask through our work every day: “how did this happen?” and “how can it be stopped?”

United States reefs in particular are suffering from major issues like overfishing, climate change, and nutrient pollution, which occurs when excess nutrients from waste water or agricultural runoff cause out-of-control algae growth, turning reefs into fields of seaweeds.  I saw first-hand how extreme frigid water temperatures in the winter of 2010 decimated reefs in the Florida Keys, killing corals that had survived for 300 years.  Lionfish, an invasive species that has made its way to the Atlantic coast, voraciously gobble reef-dwelling fish vital to coral ecosystems.  And the international coral trade for aquariums and curios has degraded reefs around the world, including our own.

The challenges that face our coral reefs are great.  But this project is a valuable new gateway to raising awareness about the plight of global coral reefs, and educating the public about how to stop the damage.

Defenders conservation scientist Dan Thornhill was the lead author of a study examining the effects of climate change on coral reefs in the Florida Keys last year- you can read it here.