DATE: Monday, April 7, 1997                 TAG: 9704050050

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Maddry 

                                            LENGTH:   90 lines

IT'S ABOUT TIME WE GAVE THE POOR SHARK A BREAK

LAST WEEK WHEN commercial and recreational fishermen were told they must curtail their catch of sharks along the South Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, Jack Musick felt the restrictions had been a long time coming.

Musick is head of the shark research program at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester. Much of the data relied upon by the National Marine Fisheries Service in imposing tighter quotas on shark catching had been assembled by him and his assistants.

VIMS began its study of shark depletion back in 1973 and has been tracking shark population levels each summer on the continental shelf and in Chesapeake Bay. It's the longest program of its type on this coast.

``I think we are finally getting some responsible federal management,'' Musick said after passage of the new federal restrictions.

Virginia has been a pioneer in the management of shark resources.

Based on data collected by Musick, the state in 1990 prohibited the practice of ``longlining'' in Virginia waters. (Some commercial fishing ships set out lines many dozens of miles long fitted with hooks.)

The 1990 restrictions also limited recreational fishermen to one shark per person and commercial fishermen to 7,500 pounds per day and prohibited ``finning.'' (Fins from sharks are used in making gourmet soup in Asia, and commercial fishermen caught the fish in huge numbers because their fins could bring up to $40 a pound.)

Musick emphasizes that sharks are very easily overfished because of their slow growth rates.

It is far easier to restore a population of flounder than sharks, he said.

``It's possible to restore the summer flounder population with a management recovery program in a relatively short period, say five years,'' he explained. ``But when you have sharks, which don't mature until they are 15 years in age, and have only five young a year . . . you are looking at five decades for a recovery.''

Why all the concern about sharks anyway? Aren't they simply a nuisance and a menace?

No menace at all, Musick says. ``Your chances of being attacked by a shark are much less than being struck by lightning,'' he noted. ``There has only been one reported shark attack in Virginia in the past 30 years. And it wasn't fatal.''

Sharks are comparable to land animals such as lions and tigers. ``They act as forces of natural selection, culling out the weak and the genetically unfit from fish stocks,'' he said. And that makes each of the fish species preyed upon by sharks healthier.

Some large coastal sharks - a favorite target of commercial fishermen - have been depleted as much as 80 percent because of intense fishing since the mid-1980s.

Such drastic reductions in shark populations might have been averted had it not been for a federal failure to recognize the magnitude of the problem in implementing its management plan for sharks in 1993.

``When that plan came out, my colleagues and I looked at it and were taken aback,'' Musick said. Their dismay was caused, he said, because the federal calculations and models were wrong, because they used models for fishes with much higher reproductive rates.

``Their conclusion was that sharks could produce a surplus of 26 percent a year. So they based their quotas (the number and sizes of sharks that could be caught legally) on that estimate.''

The VIMS data showed that a surplus of sharks by 10 percent would be ``a rosy scenario,'' Musick said. ``We knew their estimates doubled what the sharks could do.''

Musick's repeated insistence that the calculations were wrong finally got the attention of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Its restrictions, effective last Wednesday, cut the quotas in half.

The federal fisheries service also banned direct fishing for five species: whale, basking, sand tiger, bigeye sand tiger and white sharks. All are considered extremely vulnerable. And the commercial fishing of large coastal sharks between April 7 and July 1 was also prohibited.

Sand tiger sharks once were fairly common sights in lower Chesapeake Bay in the summertime, Musick said. They need special protection because they grow slowly and only produce two young every other year, he noted. (Sand tigers, sand bar sharks and nurse sharks can be seen locally at the Virginia Marine Science Museum.)

Last week's federal restrictions were necessary but will not be effective unless states along the Southern coast adopt similar ones, he said. Federal restrictions are imposed in waters from 3 to 200 miles off the coast. State restrictions would extend to 3 miles offshore.

Musick noted that fishermen are active in state nursing grounds for sharks, depleting their numbers before the sharks are mature. (Chesapeake Bay is the most important nursing ground for sand bar sharks on the East Coast.)

Musick said the Virginia Marine Resources Commission has proposed regulations that would bring Virginia's shark restrictions in harmony with the federal ones. The VMRC will meet to consider those restriction at a public hearing in Newport News on April 22. ILLUSTRATION: File photo

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