Great white shark populations are ‘booming’ off the Atlantic coast of North America according to scientists at Ocearch, which has been tracking great white sharks in the region since 2012
In an interview with CBS News, Ocearch founder Chris Fischer, who has led the research to tag and study great whites said that he’s ‘seeing an ocean that’s teeming with life like we haven’t seen since the ’40s or ’50s.’
The populations of the 31 pelagic sharks and ray species have decreased by as much as 71 per cent since the 1970s, with more than a third of all species listed by the IUCN Red List as being vulnerable to extinction.
Scientists estimate that at least 100 million sharks are taken from the ocean each year, the result of legal fishing quotas, accidental bycatch and illegal bulk fishing operations.
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Great whites themselves are listed as ‘Vulnerable to Extinction’ by the IUCN Red List, although as a globally distributed species, population studies are difficult. Ocearch began to address that problem with a successful tagging project begun in 2012, which has tracked more than 90 sharks over the last decade using its online, realtime tracking system.
‘We know almost everything [about the sharks] except for proving where they mate,’ said Fischer in the CBS interview, adding that he believed ‘mating is going on, in this region, about now.’
‘As we bring them back, then we set the ocean back into balance and reset the system so that we have the best health [not only] for the sharks, but for ourselves,’ said Ocearch chief scientist, Dr Bob Heuter.
‘We actually need to retrain ourselves on how to play and enjoy a more wild, abundant ocean,’ said Fischer. ‘Look at the ocean before you walk into it. You don’t want to walk into a bait ball with birds diving on it and game fish on it because the sharks are going to be on it.
‘If you saw a mountain lion putting a stalk on a herd of elk, you wouldn’t walk out into the middle of the elk herd,’ added Fischer. ‘So we need to approach the water the same way we approach the land.’
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