Ocean science and conservation, like any human enterprise, is subject to its fair share of internal messiness from time to time.  As someone whose expertise and experience intersects several discrete domains (coral reefs, sharks, marine protected areas, and policy), I’ve witnessed plenty of dust-ups, arguments, and spats over the years.  And this week’s flurry of discussion instigated by a New York Times editorial on ocean protected areas is just the latest kerfuffle. In his op-ed, Bigger Is Not Better for Conservation, coral reef scientist and California Academy of Sciences curator, Dr Luiz Rocha, argues that large-scale, remote marine reserves are a disservice to ocean conservation.  It’s Dr Rocha’s perspectives, however, that seem more damaging.

Rocha’s argument hinges on four key points:

1. The current tally of big, remote marine reserves is in low-conflict, easy to protect (ie, low-hanging fruit) areas of the ocean where human reliance upon them is negligible and therefore government willingness to protect is strong;
2. There’s nothing worth protecting in these big, remote areas;
3. More important, smaller, near-shore ocean areas with high levels of human use are in dire need of protection;
4. Marine protected areas should be science-based (eg, protected zones should be guided by “sustainable catch limits” of commercially targeted species).

Let’s go one-by-one to see if any of these points hold water. [Note: For the sake of brevity, I’ll be using the acronym MPA frequently in this piece for “marine protected area,” but it will also serve as shorthand for “marine reserve,” “protected area,” “locally managed marine area,” or “marine managed area.”  I recognize that an MPA may not be managed or enforced, but let’s forego that technicality for the moment.]

POINT 1: “Big MPAs are easy and less consequential.”
As of today, there are approximately 20 large-scale protected areas across the ocean (ranging from tens-of-thousands to millions of square kilometers in protected area).  This includes a range from the Marianas Marine National Monument’s 16,400 square kilometers to the 1.15 million square kilometers of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawai’i.  These MPAs may consist of fully-protected, no-take (no fishing/extraction) designation to protection that still allows multiple uses.  According to the folks at MPA Atlas, there are approximately 15,000 small, coastal MPAs around the world.  Some of these, like Cordelia Banks off the island of Roatan in the Bay of Honduras, encompass only 17 square kilometers.  Many are even smaller.  Totaling all of the massive/remote and small/near-shore MPAs together gets us to approximately 2% of the ocean under some form of protection.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, held in Hawai’i in September 2016, called for member nations to set aside “30% of each marine habitat” in “highly protected MPAs and other effective area-based conservation measures” by 2030, with the ultimate aim being ”a fully sustainable ocean, at least 30% of which has no extractive activities.”

For rhetorical effect, I’ll reiterate that as of March 23, 2018, only 2% of our global oceans is protected, and 2030 is only twelve years away.

As someone in the MPA biz, I can testify that there are at present a small handful of big, deep-pocketed, international NGOs working on big international MPAs: The Pew Charitable Trusts, Conservation International, Oceana, and National Geographic. These folks have the gravitas, influence, and resources to capture heads of state attention and convene forums necessary to get things done.  You can bitch all you want about the pros and cons, but this is the reality.  Alongside the big NGOs, there are tens-to-hundreds of small to medium-sized NGOs that are working simultaneously on everything from big/remote MPAs to smaller/near-shore MPAs.  Sometimes the big NGOs work in concert with the smaller ones.  Sometime not.  It’s all site dependent.

Having worked on everything from massive MPAs to tiny MPAs over my career, I can say that none of them were “easy wins.”  So-called “low hanging fruit” may represent a unique opportunity in time.  You may have a receptive government or local community that welcomes the process.  It’s always easier to work with the willing than the resistant.  But every MPA effort in which I’ve participated involved strategy, identifying champions, public consultations, negotiations, community organizing, building political will, battling nefarious characters, rebooting strategy, sweating-out votes, and of course finding funds to support all of this.  If there are “easy wins” out there, big or small, I sure would appreciate someone pointing me in that direction.

Protecting big/remote areas or smaller/near-shore areas is not an either/or game.  This is not a binary proposition of doing one or the other.  It’s a yes/also.  We need to protect small, not so small, medium, larger, big, bigger, and massive tracts of the ocean.  We need to protect what is easy to protect, and what is harder to protect.  We must gather every bit of low-hanging fruit, and plan to reach the currently out-of-reach fruit.  MPAs occupy a spectrum or continuum, and we need to be prepared to work with everything along that spectrum.  Some NGOs will have a mandate (and talent) for pursuing big swaths of ocean.  Others are more tuned to work on local needs.  But there is a lot of real estate between the biggest and smallest MPAs for organizations, individuals, and yes, even FUNDERS to find their niche.

POINT 2: “There’s nothing worth protecting.”
This is just wholesale wrong.  What is Rocha considering as “worth” protection?  Certainly, there are species whose entire life cycle may be captured by the boundaries of an MPA.  Other species may only spend a portion of their lives within the boundaries of protection.  Protected areas are designed to factor in these variables.  But not all MPAs are envisioned around biological significance alone.  The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in North Carolina, the very first marine national monument designated by the United States in 1975, honors the historic significance of the shipwreck of the famed Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor.  Similarly, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and the entire Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, including the 110 seamounts, open waters, and all life in that area are considered biocultural resources and linked to the Hawaiian people through environmental kinship.

The ocean as a cultural seascape is vital to Hawaiian identity, their being, and essential dimension to their cognitive understanding of the world.  The ocean waters in Papahānaumokuākea were an ancient pathway for a voyaging sphere that occurred between this region and the main Hawaiian islands for over 400-500 years (ca. AD 1300-1800).  The practice of traditional wayfinding and voyaging—recently popularized in the film Moana and which is one of the most unique living traditions of the world—requires protection of the entire marine environment and open waters, not just the islands and reefs, because it relies on biological signs and natural phenomenon, such as winds, waves, currents, and the presence of marine life and birds at key moments and locations.

At the same time as Papahānaumokuākea was successfully expanded in 2016 by President Obama, the State of Hawai’i also supporting the establishment of small, coastal community-managed makai areas, driven by and for the community.  Yes, both can happen at the same time and using the same human capital, as many of the same people fought for both the small makai areas and the big Papahānaumokuākea effort.

POINT 3: “There are more important, smaller places to protect.”
Importance is relative and subjective.  It is place-driven and context-heavy.  What is important to someone in Brazil, might be less so to someone in Hawai’i.  So instead of casting stones at our neighbors, perhaps we should recognize that there are seriously limited resources, conservation bandwidth, and political will, and try to triage our priorities.  I recognize that the reality is that not all NGOs/organizations like to play-well together.  Furthermore, some places and approaches are simply not tenable due to practical considerations and political and social realities.  Again, this is a reality of modern conservation.  But as I mention above, effective MPAs do not occupy one half of a binary state.  It’s not either small or large.  Remote or near-shore.  Fully managed/enforced or paper parks/un-enforced.  Every single MPA in existence occupies a position somewhere along a continuum of effectiveness.  Even an un-managed, unfunded, and unenforced MPA is a work in progress along that continuum.

POINT 4: “They’re not science-based.”
Science should help inform MPA zoning and designation.  No questions or arguments here.  But the science needed may at times be incomplete or lacking.  Many decisions around the world, particularly in developing nations, on “sustainable catch limits” are not acted upon because data is deficient.  Should we be expected to wait for the science to be decided and settled (whatever that might mean) before action/conservation measures can be activated?  And science is but one arrow in our quiver that we should use to scope, establish, and manage MPAs.  The social sciences and economics are also driving MPA priorities and planning.

Finally…
I find an editorial like Rocha’s to be, quite frankly, dangerous.  Staking-out a claim on one side of a false dichotomy or constructing straw man arguments is the purview of graduate school.  I get it… Rocha would like to see more love shown to near shore/coral reef areas (including where he has worked in Brazil).  But what is the benefit to conservation as a whole to publish these half-baked propositions that large, remote MPAs are a waste of time in the pages of The New York Times and under the banner of an august and internationally recognized organization like the California Academy of Sciences?  We are not currently living in normal times, and this sort of rhetoric plays right into the hands of those keen to see less ocean protection, not more.

For the first time in US history, an administration is rolling back protections on national monuments, both land and sea.  Australia just this week has announced the possibility of cutting in half the protections for the Coral Seas MPA.  Conservation in one place in the ocean is not the enemy of conservation in another place.  And MPAs are not a binary switch of either big or small…  Local or remote…  Fully protected or not.  If we are going to get to the IUCN recommended target of 30% of our oceans under strong protection by 2030, we need to ramp up protections everywhere along the MPA continuum.  Yes/Also should become our mantra!  We must embrace a process of continuous improvement in our MPA work, not display a reflex of undercutting other conservation efforts.  And we need to keep our focus and attention on the real threats to a healthy ocean: over-fishing, illegal fishing, pollution, climate change, and lack of political will for action.

The post Embracing Yes/Also: Marine Protected Areas Are Not An Either/Or Proposition first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Cassidy was photographed throughout his run on The Partridge Family as well as on his international concert tours wearing white puka shell chokers. It actually became somewhat of his calling card. While not alone in sporting the puka necklace (rat packer Frank Sinatra had even been photographed with a puka choker), David Cassidy was certainly the most frequent ambassador for this style. Even in first grade, I remember boys and girls wearing puka shells. Which, for a bunch of land-locked Northeast Pennsylvania kids, is amazing. Also, this was decades before cultural appropriation would become part of our everyday discourse.

So, what’s a puka shell?

For us haole kids (I’d learn the word “haole” a couple of years later in 1972 during the Brady Bunch Hawaii vacation episode), Puka just meant “shell necklace.” In 1970, if you found any string of shells, that was a puka shell necklace.

The work “puka” is Hawaiian in origin and means “hole.” Traditionally, puka shell necklaces were constructed from scavenged shell fragments that already had a naturally-occurring hole in them. A genuine puka shell necklace is sourced from the terminal helix of a cone snail. When the snail dies, the shell may eventually erode until the terminal helix breaks off. If the tip of the helix erodes further, it will leave a ring-shaped fragment of shell as a remnant. This natural bead was collected to create the original puka shell necklaces.

Thanks in large part to David Cassidy, demand for puka shell necklaces would skyrocket around the world throughout the 1970’s. To meet demand, any shells were sourced as raw material, and shells and shell fragments from snails and bivalves were cut and drilled to create “puka” beads. This high-volume puka production continues to this day, with the majority of these puka knock-offs coming from the Philippines.  Obviously, there are a plethora of conservation concerns related to the shell jewelry trade, but that’s another post.

Puka shells today remain a mainstay for tourists from Santa Cruz, to Daytona Beach, to Point Pleasant, to Ipanema, to Bondi Beach, to back home in Waikiki. They are part of the surfer phenotype.  A quick rummage through my cabinet of embarrassing and dated jewelry found a motley collection of assorted puka necklaces (from fake to authentic) that I once proudly wore.

But puka shell interest has also evolved. Today, the most prized shell lei and necklace demand is still found in Hawaii, but now its centralized on the small island of Ni‘ihau. There, traditional artists work with tiny ocean snail shells sourced only from the island and meticulously crafted (sometimes over the course of years) to produce exquisite shell necklace designs that can fetch tens-of-thousands of dollars. The traditional craft is so important to Hawaii that in 2004, the Hawaii State Legislature unanimously approved H.B. No. 2569 which prohibits the sale of “seashell items” with a description or label using the term “Ni‘ihau” or “Niihau” unless 100% of the shells are from the island of Ni‘ihau and the item is made entirely in Hawai‘i.

The Ni‘ihau shell-work is astonishingly intricate and beautiful. But shells are still assembled by punching a minuscule hole, a “puka,” in the micro-thin shell in order to pass a thread thread through.

A shell necklace or lei remains an expression of Aloha. “Aloha” can have rather broad definitions. But my time spent working in Hawaii over the years has taught me that it certainly can be used to express a “joyous affection.” It’s in that spirit that I extend my sincere “Aloha” to the memory of David Cassidy for his music and introducing this marine biologist to puka shells.

The post How David Cassidy Introduced A Hawaiian Shell To The World first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Frequent readers will recall that I’ve talked about being queer in ocean science in this space before.  And there has been a growing body of research and writing since my early ruminations, by smart colleagues and friends (especially by Jeremy Yoder & Allison Mattheis, Maria Broadfoot, and others), who have been investigating a variety of realities and issues related to queers in STEM.

I don’t have anything new to add.  Not a lot of my perceptions or thoughts regarding being queer in ocean sciences has shifted much since I first put pen to paper several years ago.  There are still precious few exemplars of LGBT leaders in our field.  The rise of Trump and Pence has had, for these eyes, a chilling effect on the ease and safety of LGBT Americans to be more open in the public, academic, or employment space.  And quite frankly America appears to be embracing a conservatism that has me remembering the early Reagan years.

Since I am fresh from fieldwork, I thought for this Pride I’d share some of my perceptions of what it’s like for me to be a queer ocean scientist doing work internationally.  It goes without saying that these are not EVERY queer’s experiences or perceptions.  These are mine, and they are personal.  But perhaps by sharing what it’s like to go about my job, while also being an out, queer man, I can share a slice of reality that many of my cis, straight colleagues may take for granted.

Anyone who travels outside of the US will recognize that our culturally accepted personal boundaries dissolve once we set foot in a new country.  For sure there is a spectrum, but from nearly 30 years of international field work in mostly developing countries I’ve grown accustomed to the usual onslaught of interrogatives from strangers which almost always arrives on two primary subjects:

• “Are you married?” and,
• “Do you have children?’

It’s not hard to understand these sorts of interrogations.  First of all, English is often limited, and this is simply an easy way to make some conversation.  Fair enough.  On another level, as I have been reminded by very wise colleagues, this is a first salvo to ensure that I (the stranger) am “one of them.”  “One of them,” for immediate purposes, meaning someone whom they can relate to.  This older, strange man in their village has a wife.  He has kids.  He is like them.  It is a normalizing exchange designed more to set my hosts at ease than it is to set me at ease.  And that is absolutely fine.

However it creates, for this queer man, an often difficult dilemma.  I want to be transparent and open and honest with my hosts or my colleagues or my stakeholders in the field.  I want them to trust me as an individual.  As a person.  But at the same time, I have a job to accomplish.  And that job takes precedence to my personal needs or feelings.  Most of the regions where I work (the Caribbean, Pacific, IndoPacific, Indian Ocean), have abysmal LGBT policy.  Homosexuality (mostly defined as same sex relations between men) is still a punishable offense throughout most of the countries in which I work.  And while I understand that a gay American won’t necessarily receive the same social penalties as a gay local in my field sites, I have to calculate whether I want to be “that gay American” rather than just “that American” in almost every setting.

Obviously, the more time I spend in a destination, and the closer I get to stakeholders, the more comfort and safety I feel in opening up to my colleagues and friends.  I’ve shared that I’m gay, and married, with quite a few field colleagues over the years.  But it is extremely site and situation specific.  Being “out” with colleagues in Turks and Caicos is VERY different than considering such a proposition in Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, or Indonesia.

Each of the countries in which I’ve conducted field work is positioned somewhere along a continuum of acceptance of the existence of LGBT people, and subsequently their rights and value to that country.  I’ve commented before that while on field work in Fiji, I was reminded by one of my Fijian staff that, “Fiji does not have gay people.”  This in contrast to the reality that you can fire up Grindr and find dozens of local listings or walk through the Fijian capital of Suva on most any night and find trans women in many of the bars.

My personal reality as a gay man trying to conduct ocean science or conservation in developing parts of the world is that I am choosing to focus upon my work and my professional priorities over my personal identity politics.  Others may make a different decision, and that is their prerogative.  But I have limited time, funding, and limited attention span.  I choose to have my stakeholders focus upon the work at hand.  If I have the luxury of extra time in a destination, certainly this equation can be adjusted.

Unfortunately, the net result to me is often a feeling of regret or sadness that I “can’t entirely be myself.”  Straight colleagues have sometimes chided me that I should not care about this as much.  But I think that’s their privilege talking.  I don’t want to be, “Rick, the gay scientist,” or, “Rick, the gay conservationist.”  I just want to be Rick.

So, it all makes me feel a bit like Mark, the best man in the film Love Actually, played by The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln, who is in love with his best friend’s fiance.  He spends the entire film putting on a charade of indifference to the now-married Keira Knightley, but finally finds a way to let her know his true feelings (through the ridiculous use of cue cards and a boombox). Not a perfect metaphor for my situation, but it nonetheless underscores a wish that I have that I didn’t need the identity acrobatics in order to do good work.

The post Pride, Actually. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Allow me to explain by indulging me in a little experiment.

If you have Yelp or a similar restaurant-finding app, fire it up and do a search for “tuna poke” from your current location.  Go ahead… I’ll wait.

For the benefit of poke noobs, poke (pronounced POH-kay) is a traditional raw fish salad that is an important part of Hawaiian cuisine.  While various seafood can be used to prepare poke, by far the most common and most popular preparation uses tuna, primarily yellowtail or big-eye tuna.  While poke has been eaten for millennia by Polynesians, it was Hawaii chef Sam Choy (the “Godfather of Poke”) who really put the dish on the map for a global audience.  So much so that Business Insider claimed in early 2016 that, “poke will be the next big thing in fast food.”

Fast forward to April 2017.  So how did your local tuna poke search go?  Allow me to share the results of my search from my home in Oakland, California:

Yelp apparently limits smartphone map results to a maximum of 20 locations per search presumably to avoid over-cluttering the screen.  But according to Yelp, I have at least 12 locations within easy walking distance where I can find tuna poke.  Some are mom&pop poke operations like “Poke Koma,” while others are mega-poke chains like “Poke Zone” (a wholly-owned subsidiary of “Poke Salad USA,” or “Ono Grill.”  Still others are sushi restaurants or sushi fast food retailers that advertize poke.  Maybe it’s just me, but I was amazed by how many poke retailers had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.  Granted, I live in the SF Bay Area, a proud foodie haven, but this poke bonanza was most definitely NOT the case just a year ago.  Tuna poke has really taken off.

Wondering if poke was booming across in San Francisco, I performed a few Yelp searches to check for patterns.  Here’s what I found:

San Francisco:
Again, the map search is limited to 20 results across the visible map area.  But tuna poke retailers can be found across the city, with a plethora of choices not surprisingly being concentrated in the downtown/financial and tourist-heavy neighborhoods.  But what if I drill down closer into a neighborhood?  Zooming in on The Castro, for instance, I can find another set of poke retailers who did not appear in the initial, broader scale search.

According to Yelp, I can find 17 retailers who carry tuna poke in The Castro alone.  Who knew there was so much fish eating happening in The Castro?

So let’s assume that the deeper, more selective geographical area you search for “tuna poke” on Yelp will return more unique options for procuring your poke.  But what does poke availability look like across the mainland US?  Here are my results…

Washington DC:

New York City:
With a drill down on south of 34th Street:

And from Tribeca to the Financial District:

Houston, Texas:

Minneapolis, Minnesota:

Anchorage, Alaska:

Portland, Maine:

And yes, even Fargo, North Dakota has poke according to Yelp:

Which raises an important point.  These are results of what Yelp reports as to the availability of tuna poke based on their users who have reviewed restaurants, posted photos, or restaurants who have advertised on their app that the menu includes tuna poke.  I would imagine that North Dakota readers may know of some great tuna poke spots in Fargo.  So take all of these results with a dose of context.

But it does indicate to me that tuna poke has gone from a specialty dish that required a holiday in Hawaii to enjoy to something that has been mainstreamed across the mainland.  This represents A LOT of tuna consumption.

But here’s the thing.  The Hawaii tuna poke brand identity that Chef Roy Choy and others have successfully built is one that conjures impressions of the freshest catch of the day (remember, you are eating raw fish) that is being harvested in Hawaii and shared with Aloha around the world.  When you eat poke, it’s supposed to evoke an image and a connection to Hawaii.

And this is where I smell a rat.
Take a peek at a Yelp search for tuna poke in Honolulu, Hawaii:

Again, the search is limited to 20 retailers, but not surprisingly Honolulu streets are lined with poke vendors from downtown to Diamond Head.  This is as one might expect at ground zero for tuna poke.

But in the motherland of poke, mass consumers of this dish (and by that I mean visitors and residents who eat poke regularly from high-volume retailers such as Safeway, Foodland, KTA Super Stores, and also numerous food courts that dot Waikiki as well as across the main islands) are NOT eating fresh-caught fish.  Volume tuna poke sellers are not buying their fish from small scale, sustainable, local fishermen (called pono fishermen) who fished that day but from the Honolulu Fish Auction Block.  The mass-market poke retailers are sourcing deep-frozen tuna (often treated with carbon monoxide gas in order to retain color) that were caught perhaps months ago by tuna longline fishermen, often from the waters of Micronesia or the Marshall Islands.

Very little of the premier quality tuna landed in Honolulu makes it’s way to Hawaii restaurants or poke retailers, but is destined for restaurants in Japan and other Asian markets where they fetch handsome prices.

So if the bulk of Hawaii poke eaten is sourced from long-ago frozen, carbon-monoxide color-stabilized tuna that was caught on longlining vessels, what do you suppose mainland tuna poke vendors are selling?

Make no mistake… I love poke.  It’s delicious, simple, satisfying in a way that is hard to describe, and I do truly feel (as much as a white dude can without sounding culturally appropriative) a connection to a Polynesian tradition.   Why I find the proliferation of mass-market tuna poke so alarming is that it’s coming at a steep series of costs to the ocean as well as to sustainable local fishermen.  First, there’s the reality that longline fishing, where miles of mainline are deployed with thousands of baited hook sets, is the absolute antithesis of sustainable, pono fishing.  The tally of bycatch and discards from tuna longline fishing is staggering, and it means that you carve a very deep impact on long-term ocean health with each serving of tuna poke that is sourced in this manner.

Secondly, in embracing mass-produced tuna poke we miss the fact that truly sustainable tuna poke is indeed possible.  Each of the Hawaiian Islands has communities and networks of local pono fishermen who use handlines and practice traditional methods to bring their catch to market.  Contrast this with the Hawaii commercial tuna longline industry that uses mostly foreign workers who work for slave wages and who cannot even step off their ships.  Of course pono fishing cannot supply mass global demands.  But that, in essence, is what makes this type of fishing pono (or correct/righteous/sustainable) in the first place.  Perhaps some food is simply not suited for globalization.

Finally, this explosion in tuna poke further stokes the mythology that our oceans are an inexhaustible source of food, irrespective of the fishing effort or methods.  This isn’t conjecture… this is free market reality.  If there is demand for a resource, there will always be a group seeking to exploit it.  Case in point, the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council (WESPAC) is now urging President Donald Trump to remove fishing prohibitions within the Pacific marine monuments created by Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama and re-establish the councils’ supervision of the fisheries.  Why would a quota-based fishery that meets it’s federally determined quota every year be trying to open fishing once again in fully-protected marine reserves?  Simply put, it’s greed.  But it’s greed that is fueled by consumer demand, and cheap/affordable tuna is a big part of that.

Perhaps tuna poke will, like the cronut, fade away once the next food trend appears.  Or perhaps we will hit peak poke before that.  My crystal ball is hard to read.  Tuna has the dinstinction of being incredibly ono (Hawaiian for “delicious”).  That’s a good thing.  Now, if we can just try harder to also make sure it’s pono.

The post Peak Poke? (Or, Our Choices Have Consequences) first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post When Is An Internship Not An Internship? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In between shirking my gym commitment and shopping for rolled-oats for some apple crisp, I found time to document my own idiosyncratic look-back on 2016. This being me, I’m choosing to focus on those stories or events that I think we MISSED, didn’t get enough attention, or perhaps slid under our collective radar over the past year. This isn’t a “Top 10” list, and not all of my picks make rosy news, even though I realize that we’re all supposed to be #hopey, #changey, and #oceanoptimismy. But a retrospective that doesn’t consider all the news, warts and all, is cherry picking IMHO. So, let’s get started…

30% of Ocean Protected
Scientists and conservationists gathered in Honolulu, HI, this past summer for the Olympics of biodiversity conservation, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress. Somewhat buried amidst ten days of meetings, PR stunts, junkets, and IUCN member voting was a decision by IUCN members to support Motion 53 that commits members to increase the portion of the ocean that is highly protected to at least 30 percent (we’re at just over 3% globally right now). The Government of Palau, and NGOs from Hawaii and New Zealand were some of the strongest supporters for this motion. Norway, Japan, and France led opposition. Scientific evidence supports protecting at least 30 percent of the ocean through highly protected marine reserves as an essential strategy to meeting a broad range of environmental and management goals.  Now comes the hard part… turning the commitment into reality.

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Rhode Island has a near and dear place in my heart. First, for it’s damn delicious Greek pizza (No seriously, if you’re ever in Bristol, RI, pop in to the Bristol House of Pizza for a slice… you won’t regret it!). But a close second is because the Ocean State is home to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a Co-Chair of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, and the most consistent, informed, and under-reported elected voice on the national and global threats due to inaction around climate change. In 2016, Sen Whitehouse wrote his 150^th “Time to Wake Up” climate speech that was read on the Senate floor. He also authored an open letter to PEOTUS Donald Trump calling for strong climate action. It seems fitting that the Ocean State should be leading the call on impacts to the ocean due to a rapidly changing climate.  The next four years portend a lot of defense will be needed just to hold the ground on the science of climate change.  Senator Whitehouse is well-positioned to lead that charge.

The Great Barrier Reef is Dead
On October 11, 2016, the Great Barrier Reef was pronounced dead. Sure, it was satire. But that didn’t stop the coral science community from going apeshit and spending several weeks afterwards in their own Monty Python-esque spiral to proclaim, “Wait… It’s not dead! Yet!”   Only to be followed by more news pieces, quoting the same scientists who railed against the obituary, and featuring ledes like, “Great Barrier Reef hit by worst coral die-off,” or, “Great Barrier Reef is dying faster than ever.” Our campaign to confuse the public about the Great Barrier Reef and coral health has been a smashing success.

WESPAC: Your Tax Dollars Undoing Ocean Conservation
You probably haven’t heard of the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council (or WESPAC) before, and their executive director Kitty Simonds is happy to keep it that way. Ms Simonds and her WESPAC operatives are behind every effort to oppose or squash ocean conservation measures across the Pacific basin. They see marine protected areas as the bane of commercial fishermen, disregarding decades of results and data that prove exactly the opposite. WESPAC however is VERY well funded. By you, in fact. That’s because WESPAC receives tax-payer funding as established by Congress in 1976 through the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Perhaps you think it’s inappropriate for Kitty Simonds in her official capacity as executive director of WESPAC – a taxpayer, federally funded entity – to play such a prominent role in aggressive lobbying efforts to generate public and political opposition to measures that insure sustainable fishing into the future? In 2016, the Conservation Council of Hawaii thought something smelled fishy about WESPAC’s MO. Perhaps 2017 may be bring some closer scrutiny.

Slave Labor on Your Plates
How do you like your Hawaiian seafood served? With human slavery or without? In 2016, the Associated Press broke the story of how hundreds of undocumented foreign fishermen are employed in a Hawaii-based U.S. commercial fishing fleet, and are confined to American boats for years at a time due to a federal loophole that allows them to work but exempts them from most basic labor protections. Many come from impoverished Southeast Asian and Pacific nations to take the dangerous jobs, which can pay as little as 70 cents an hour. An AP reporter found that, “With no legal standing on U.S. soil, the men are at the mercy of their American captains on American-flagged, American-owned vessels, catching prized swordfish and ahi tuna. Since they don’t have visas, they are not allowed to set foot on shore. The entire system, which contradicts other state and federal laws, operates with the blessing of high-ranking U.S. lawmakers and officials.” Surely WESPAC, the taxpayer-funded regional fisheries management body based in Hawaii, would step in to right such a heinous human rights abuse as well as restore the image of Hawaii’s commercial fishing? “’Maybe there needs to be legislation. I mean, who’s going to take that on?” said WESPAC executive director Kitty Simonds. A task force was assembled in late 2016 and a revised contract drafted for Hawaii-based commercial fishing captains to use with foreign fishermen crew.   The contract however still lets owners set the minimum salary, allows workers to spend the entire year at sea (15 trips, 10 to 40 days each), and still requires workers to stay on board while the boat owner holds their identity and immigration documents. Cornell University Stephen Yale-Loehr said the new contract simply reinforces the current deplorable situation by emphasizing that the crew members have no real rights.

Sea Cucumbers Get No Respect
Sure, they look like giant turds (come on, Donkey Dung sea cucumber?). But sea cucumbers, the rubbery, elongated echinoderms found everywhere in the ocean from sandy nearshore to deepest, muddy abyss, are living filtration systems that sift sediments from the seafloor and recycle nutrients back into the food web. Recent research even suggests how sea cuke poop can help buffer seawater around coral reefs and stave off encroaching ocean acidification around reefs. Unfortunately for sea cucumbers, they are also considered a delicacy as “bêche-de-mer” or “trepang” in Asia. So, like so many ocean species, Hong Kong is where sea cucumbers go to die, and seafloor habitats around the world are being stripped of these important biofilters. But the rush for peak sea cucumber also carries a human cost. The profitability of sea cucumbers combined with increasing catch quotas and the depletion of the species in shallower waters has poorly or untrained divers in developing countries diving deeper and disregarding dive safety in order to maximize profit. The result is far too many deaths or paralysis from decompression sickness in sea cucumber fisheries. But while export bans to slow sea cucumber depletion are few and far between, countries like Fiji are trying to minimize the human costs of the commercial industry by banning the use of Scuba or other assisted underwater breathing apparatus in the harvest. Keep your eyes peeled for more sea cuke news, and hopefully sea cuke protections, in 2017.

The post A New Year, A Look Back first appeared on Deep Sea News.

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Now get cracking!

CHOOSE YOUR REEF THREAT

CHOOSE YOUR INTERVENTION

CHOOSE YOUR MARINE FUNDER

The post Reef Roulette first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Have you seen the new Jurassic World trailer?  As if I even have to ask…  Of course you have.  And of course you are amazed by the scene featuring what appears to be either a short-necked species of pliosaur (maybe a Kronosaurus?) or a super-sized version of a mosasaur, (an extinct marine reptile, not a dinosaur) being fed what appears to be a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias).

Here are a few screen grabs of the juicy action:

I cannot wait to see this scene in Imax 3-D!

I’ll leave for Dr M or Dr Martini (they’re the mathemagicians) to sort out how deep that holding pool would need to be to allow a predator of that size to generate thrust sufficient to breach the surface.  Or why the splash-down doesn’t displace sufficient water to inundate the arena.

But here’s my problem.  Let’s assume that Jurassic World is still set on one of the fictional islands off Costa Rica.  Costa Rica is party to the UN Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (or CITES for short).  As I’ve reported before, CITES works by subjecting international trade in specimens of selected species to certain controls. All import, export, re-export and introduction of species covered by the Convention has to be authorized through a licensing system.  The species covered by CITES are listed in three Appendices, according to the degree of protection they need.  Great white sharks are currently CITES Appendix II listed, which includes species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival.  As of March 2010, the species has also been included in Annex I of the CMS Migratory Sharks MoU, which strives for increased international understanding and coordination for the protection of certain migratory sharks.

Parties wishing to continue international trade in any of these listed species must demonstrate a non-detriment finding in order to be provided permits for international trade.  A non-detriment finding represents a comprehensive stock assessment of the target species that considers an analysis of population status, distribution, populations trajectories, current harvest rates, ecosystem roles and implications, and existing trade data.  In total, a non-detriment finding demonstrates that (in the case of white sharks) fishing for and international trade in these species will not cause the collapse or critical depletion of the species nor loss of any ecosystem functions those species provide.

I presume that InGen (if they are still the IP and share holders for Jurassic World), as a US-based company doing business in Costa Rica is obligated to operate within parameters dictated by Costa Rican law.  I’m not aware of a white shark fishery in Costa Rica, so I presume that Jurassic World buys their sharks from foreign fleets.  In which case I would like to see Jurassic World produce their non-detriment finding for the great whites they are sourcing for prehistoric wildlife food.  Until such time I cannot endorse anyone planning to holiday in Jurassic Park this summer.

That is all.  Now back to my bubble bath.

The post Is Jurassic World Violating CITES Protections? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

But I digress.  I love attending DEMA because it brings together many of the key stakeholders I have targeted in my ocean conservation work over the past several decades.  My work has operated at the interface between coral reef and shark conservation and the marine tourism world.  I believe that dive tourism professionals (like dive shop owners, dive instructors, dive guides, and naturalists) are an ideal target audience for conservation because they are in the water every day and can witness first hand any changes or disturbances on the ecosystem, often well in advance of scientific documentation.  Also, since their continued profitability depends on the sustainability and longevity of the ecosystem, they have a vested (self) interest to be involved as active stewards in conservation.  Or at least that’s my operating assumption.

I’ll be returning to the DEMA Show floor to continue discussions I began last year with international dive operators who market shark dive tourism as a primary focus or specialty.

The shark dive tourism niche is big business within the diving community and there’s no sign of this trend slowing down.  Whether it’s fear or fascination, sharks consistently occupy the top-three most wished-for sightings on dive trips.  I was recently in the Turks and Caicos Islands where a dive operator went so far as to say that for his business a dive trip was a success or a bust depending of whether guests could see a shark.  The world’s biggest dive certification provider, PADI, now offers specialty courses in shark conservation and whale shark diving.  Many dive shops are offering specialty courses in “shark awareness.”  And diving industry media is paying close attention to all this interest with regular “top shark dive” features, as well as a dedicated issue to shark diving in Scuba Diving magazine.

The conservation community has also been paying close attention to this growing interest in shark diving as it represents a lever for building stronger protections for sharks.  If a shark can be worth more alive as a tourism draw over the course of its life versus the one-time utilization value of that same shark for its meat and fins, it represents a potentially compelling argument to tourism bureaus and decision makers for establishing strong protection.  Precisely this sort of analysis was done in the Micronesian nation of Palau which quantified the economic benefits of Palau’s shark-diving industry and found that its worth far exceeds that of shark fishing. In Palau’s case, the estimated annual value to the tourism industry of an individual reef shark was US$179,000 (or US$1.9 million over its lifetime).  In contrast, a single reef shark would only bring an estimated US$108 for fins and meat.  For Palau, it made good economic sense to establish permanent protection for sharks in their waters.

Given the global threat to shark populations, I think anything that can create an incentive to keeps shark alive is a good idea.  But one aspect that I’ve found more than a little curious about the emergent shark dive tourism sector is the apparent “free-pass’ the dive industry and scientific community appear to be giving around the feeding of sharks on some shark dives.  Look, I’m a realist.  I recognize that if you want to sell a “shark dive” (and be successful at it) you need to provide sharks on a regular basis.  Contrary to the 70’s Jaws hype or any impression you may get from Shark Week dreck or Sharknado, sharks for the most part aren’t particularly interested in people.  Especially groups of people during a dive, with their associated noise of bubbly-breathing.  Often the sharks I see on dives are at the periphery of my visibility.  I somewhat suspect this is by their choice.  So if you want to shorten that viewing distance, you need to attract them.  And with sharks that means providing food.

Over the past few years of discussing shark feeding with colleagues and friends within the dive and conservation community, I’ve found that few issues appear to be as polarizing as that of feeding (or provisioning) of sharks for tourism.  My sampling has found that most respondents are either dead-set against the practice or they are okay with feeding provided precautions are taken.  Few individuals I’ve met appear to take a middle position on the subject or are neutral.  My own initial hesitancy around the idea of feeding sharks was based more on the copious terrestrial case studies we have that demonstrate the feeding of wildlife generally doesn’t end well for the wildlife.  Wildlife can become habituated to and dependent upon human-provided food, and overly persistent, curious, or aggressive animals can result in human injuries or death which then often necessitates wildlife being destroyed.  (This isn’t even factoring the reality that many of the foods being fed to wildlife are ill-suited to their metabolic needs.  I recently received this image (right) from a friend in Tahoe of what she calls a “Garbage Bear.”)

Another somewhat troubling aspect of the uptick in shark diving interest that is related to but not necessarily coupled with the practice of shark feeding is the insistence that sharks “are our friends.”  One of my more avuncular friends has labeled this the “dolphinization” of sharks.  I’ve noticed that some individuals are in such a rush to convince others that sharks are benign and “tame” and thus worthy of protection that it’s led to a glut of imagery and antics that starts to take us into Timothy Treadwell territory (Treadwell was a self-styled grizzly bear conservationist whose insistence that Alaska grizzly’s could be safely observed at close range led to his death, the death of his fiance, and ultimately the death of two bears).  More on the potential downside to wildlife from our uninformed interactions later.

Like any scientist, I turned to the literature to see what had been published on impacts from shark feeding.  Not surprisingly, the literature on the subject is relatively thin.  What data existed seemed to focus upon the behavioral impacts to sharks from provisioning.  In two studies (one in Fiji on bull sharks, the other in the Bahamas on tiger sharks), investigators concluded that the practice of feeding showed temporary behavior changes during the act of feeding, but aggregated sharks mostly dispersed immediately following feeding.  In the case of the Bahamian tiger sharks, fed sharks hung around less and showed broader movement patterns than Florida tiger sharks.  It’s hard to draw conclusions on the impacts from feeding sharks from a few studies.  And it’s important to consider factors such as the dive shops that were being observed.  In both the Fiji and Bahamas cases, the dive operations are what I would consider at the top of their game, use rigorous safety protocols, and feedings are highly choreographed.  What does fed shark behavior look like when such rigor or routine is not as carefully applied?

My mission to see sharks protected and my rationale that shark dive tourism can be a powerful lever for that protection led me down a path of interest in seeing shark diving being successful and as safe and sustainable as possible.  This interest drew me more closely into the shark diving world than I had previously been familiar.  I’ve been immensely fortunate that my work takes me around the world, and I’ve capitalized on opportunities to see first-hand what shark diving looks like under numerous scenarios.  With no exaggeration, I’ve been on spectacular shark dives and uneventful shark dives.  I’ve felt remarkably safe and well-looked after and I’ve felt abandoned and scared shitless.  I’ve seen sharks relaxed and orderly during feedings and I’ve seen full-on frenzies.  My very personal and subjective (although I also suspect accurate) summary on what I’ve observed to date is that there is money to be made on shark dive tourism and it is a powerful incentive to “get in on the action,” regardless of experience and awareness of lessons learned.  And like all businesses, there’s a continuum of what I would consider sustainable practice… some are deeply invested in good training, supervision, and safety and some are in it to simply turn quick profit.

In hopes of trying to help inform how a focus on best practices, lessons learned, and potentially a code of conduct could assist the shark diving industry, I embarked on what is (to my my knowledge) the first systematic global assessment of current practice within the industry.  I wanted to capture a snapshot of shark diving that is diverse geographically as well as with respect to species of sharks observed.  As you might expect, not an easy task.  Not many operators are keen to share their operational sausage-making with strangers.  But it pays to build bridges and relationships over a conservation career, and I’ve been slowly assembling a picture of the state of shark diving that I believe can be instructive.  On the eve of heading to DEMA to continue discussions, I thought I’d share some of my findings.  Using a two-page interview that asked respondents to answer questions along a range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” I’m already getting some interesting returns.  On the tables below, “strongly agree” is at the top of the y-axis, “strongly disagree” is at the bottom of the y-axis:

I also turned this question around to ask whether respondents were aware of shark-related accidents or injuries to staff or guests within their competitors businesses.  This is one of those times when you can actually catch yourself laughing during data crunching:

One question asked respondents whether they were familiar with complaints filed against their business by neighboring resorts, local residents, or government:

I find this question to be one of the more interesting for the survey.  The protection and safeguarding of sharks that you aggregate through feeding is an important foundation for a shark dive business.  After all, a reliable supply of sharks for viewing is key to the shark dive tourism model.  It’s one thing to be fond of aggregating sharks as a shark dive business.  But what do your neighbors, particularly in destinations with sand and sun tourism, think about aggregating big predators in proximity to beach goers?  And if you want to keep complaints to a minimum and safeguard your business from intrusion by neighbors or government, doesn’t it stand to reason that you would take precautions that demonstrate you are minimizing risk to your clients or your neighbors clients?  I believe there’s an important policy implication in this aspect of shark diving that should not be undersold.  And we have some precedent of what can happen when we ignore this connection.

The inset picture on the left is of a bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) that was taken on a beach dive I did several years ago just south of Cancun in Mexico’s Riviera Maya.  The dive operator approached us on the beach and offered to take us to see bull sharks that naturally aggregate each winter in that part of Mexico.  We entered from the beach, swam out perhaps 50 meters from shore, sank with extra weights to the bottom, and waited for the guide to join us with a bucket of dead fish that he dumped on the sand in front of us to attract the bulls.  I saw perhaps three bull sharks on the dive.  None fed on any fish, but I was fine with that since by the time the bulls showed up the fish was drifting very close to our legs and the slick of fish oil was everywhere around us.  All in all it was a creepy dive with poor visibility, skittish sharks, and seemed like an accident waiting to happen.  And I was consistently conscious of how too close to shore we seemed to be for this feeding to be happening.

In the years since this dive, shark dive tourism exploded in Mexico’s Yucatan.  One excellent operation in Playa del Carmen that legitimately pioneered bull shark diving in the Yucatan grew into several copy cat businesses, including some very fly-by-night operations.  Shark diving and feeding began to be offered in locations uncomfortably close to shore along Playa del Carmen’s heavily populated resort beaches.  The Hotel Association of the Riviera Maya began to receive complaints from hotel owners and other concerned businesses.  With this as a backdrop, in January of 2011, a tourist had a serious chunk of her thigh and upper arm removed by a bull shark in Cancun.  Fingers were pointed in many directions at the time, and many local voices raised concerns about the shark feeding so close to shore.  The local government responded by issuing a cull order to fishermen from Cancun to Playa del Carmen.  Many sharks, mostly pregnant females, were caught and killed as a demonstration of action by the municipality.

I’m not saying that Mexican shark dive tourism caused the tourist injury.  I can’t make that casual connection.  But I can say that the lack of a rigorous code of conduct, the lack of meaningful safety protocols to dive clients, and the lack of serious consideration of community concerns made it easier for the local government to act in the manner they chose.  The end result is that whatever gains we may have made in perceptions and attitudes about sharks and the need for their protection got undermined by this unfortunate incident.  And there are other similar stories that I’ve heard around the world.

That was then.  This is now, and I’m now off to Vegas to continue discussions with shark dive tourism operators who are eager to see some leadership step forward with regard to developing best practices within their industry.  Some of this is happening from within, and you will likely be hearing more about Global Shark Diving as an industry-led initiative.  And there are efforts underway through collaborations between NGOs like WWF, The Manta Trust, PADI Project Aware, and academia to try to formalize best practice and perhaps certification.  And I’m working to build-out Sustainable Shark Diving as an open source collection of existing lessons learned as well as customer reviews a la Trip Advisor.  Certainly a lot of new tools are on the horizon, and I’m excited to keep things rolling this week at the DEMA Show.

For once, I’m hoping that what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.

The post Shark Feeding, Managed Risk, and the Tredwellian Paradigm first appeared on Deep Sea News.

As the sun rose this morning here in Trinidad and Tobago where I’m conducting field work, I was certain about two facts.  First: Trinidadians and Tobagonians awoke to their morning ritual of doubles and a new reality with regard to their nation’s obligations on the international trade of five species of endangered shark species (Great, Scalloped, and Smooth Hammerhead sharks, Porbeagle sharks, and Oceanic White-tip sharks) as well as all manta ray species.  And secondly: I knew I could still drive this very morning (or any morning) to the public market just outside the Trinidad capital of Port of Spain and find dozens to hundreds of dead hammerhead sharks for sale.

Let’s take a look at the ocean optimism first.  As the direct result of the hard work by individuals and organizations for over a decade, the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (or familiarly known as CITES) resolved in 2013 that five shark species and all manta rays were to be included in Appendix II.  As of this Sunday morning, September 14, 2014, those new rules came into effect and nations that are party to CITES must now enforce these regulations (more on what’s at stake if nations fail to take these obligations seriously in just a moment).

In the case of shark and ray conservation, the need for a body like CITES is born from the recognition of the self-perpetuating cycle of lack of information and lack of adequate management action for commercially valuable species at the local and regional levels.  This cycle has been acknowledged by many of us within the shark conservation community as the Wheel of Shame.

Although shark fishing occurs around the world, most jurisdictions lack good or reliable data on shark populations (or data is deficient for making informed decisions on sustainability).  Because of this data-poor situation, scientists cannot offer recommendations on stock assessments, catch limits, or other critical fisheries advice.  Governments tend not to prioritize or create fisheries management guidelines in the absence of scientific recommendations.  All the while, shark fishing continues unabated, species depletion continues, and the ecosystem function of having healthy shark populations in our oceans is undermined.  And around we go.

CITES works to help partially control the Wheel of Shame by subjecting international trade in specimens of selected species to certain controls. All import, export, re-export and introduction from the sea of species covered by the Convention has to be authorized through a licensing system. Each Party to the Convention must designate one or more Management Authorities in charge of administering that licensing system and one or more Scientific Authorities to advise them on the effects of trade on the status of the species.

The species covered by CITES are listed in three Appendices, according to the degree of protection they need.  Appendix I, the category with most stringent protection, includes species threatened with extinction.  Appendix II includes species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival.  Appendix III contains species that are protected in at least one country, which has asked other CITES Parties for assistance in controlling the trade.

At each COP, the 175-nations (or Parties) submit proposals to list species on the Appendices, remove species from the Appendices, or transfer species from one Appendix to another. Species proposals are discussed and either passed or defeated by consensus or voted upon. Each Party gets one vote. It takes two-thirds of the Parties present and voting to pass a species proposal.

Decisions to propose CITES listing is based on the best available scientific evidence on species biomass, distribution, genomics, ecological connectivity, and known threats and vulnerability to commercial trade. Consideration for CITES listing is, by mandate, to include species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival:

CITES RESOLVES that, when considering proposals to amend Appendix I or II, the Parties shall, by virtue of the precautionary approach and in case of uncertainty either as regards the status of a species or the impact of trade on the conservation of a species, act in the best interest of the conservation of the species concerned and adopt measures that are proportionate to the anticipated risks to the species.

Long-time readers may recall that I’ve not always felt so optimistic following a CITES meeting.  COP 15 in Doha saw Blue-fin tuna, polar bears, eight species of shark, and an entire family of red and pink corals get passed over.  Conservation work at this international level is extremely high stakes, tricky, and often (if not regularly) a quagmire of corruption, coercion, and collusion.  I’ve heard too many stories of flamboyant bribery, vote-buying, secret ballots, and eleventh-hour reversals.

Yet despite these challenges, CITES remains one of the most powerful tools in the international conservation arsenal.  Flouting CITES obligations is not a trivial matter for a Party.  And while it’s not as complete a list of shark species that I’d like to see receiving protection, the new CITES restrictions that came into effect today represents the most comprehensive global effort seen in CITES’ 40-year history to give sharks and manta rays a better chance of surviving in the wild.

WHAT DO NEW CITES RULES MEAN IN PRACTICAL TERMS?
The new CITES Appendix II listing for the five sharks and all manta rays has created a new reality to all CITES Parties.  Effective today, Parties wishing to continue international trade in any of these listed species must demonstrate a non-detriment finding in order to be provided permits for international trade.  While the official verbiage gets a bit technical, a non-detriment finding represents a comprehensive stock assessment of the target species that considers an analysis of population status, distribution, populations trajectories, current harvest rates, ecosystem roles and implications, and existing trade data.  In total, a non-detriment finding demonstrates that (in the case of sharks and rays) fishing for and international trade in these species will not cause the collapse or critical depletion of the species nor loss of any ecosystem functions those species provide.  Short of providing a non-detriment finding, Parties may not continue international trade.

Since participation in CITES is voluntary and each Party assumes financial and technical responsibility for their own implementation and compliance, you might think that CITES has little teeth when it comes to infractions or failure to uphold obligations.  In truth, the CITES Secretariat does not monitor international trade but  needs to be informed of an infraction by a Party before action is considered.  And if international trade in the now CITES Appendix II-listed sharks and rays is small, you might think that a Party has little to no risk in letting shark fins or manta gill-rakers slip through their borders.  But consider for a moment the full suite of CITES species a Party may traffic in their international trade, not just sharks and rays.

Infractions from lack of enforcement of any single CITES species regulation can impact all of a Parties trade in CITES species.  The language of the Convention stipulates that infractions can result in, “the recommendations to all Parties to suspend CITES related trade with the offending party.”  This means that a Party not only risks its trade in shark fin through lack of compliance in CITES Appendix II restrictions, but also its lucrative trade in exotic hardwoods like mahogany, rosewood, or ebony.  Then there’s trade in fish, invertebrate, and coral species for the multi-million dollar home aquarium industry.  Or trade in birds, reptiles, or mammals for the pet market.  And Parties also benefit financially by supplying biological specimens for pharmaceutical research.  With CITES regulatory infractions, if you’re in for a penny you’re in for a pound.

But while the new CITES Appendix II listings for sharks and rays are reason for celebration within the conservation community, our work is far from over.  Scroll back up to the top of this post and take another look at the photo.  That dead Scalloped hammerhead shark was photographed in a fish market here in Trinidad yesterday.  It was a juvenile, and it was one of many.  Today’s new CITES rules change NOTHING with regard to domestic fishing, consumption, and trade.  In a place like Trinidad, that local consumption and trade volume is not trivial.  Those endangered hammerheads will be there today, tomorrow, and as long as local and regional management recommendations are lacking.

That’s where working with local fishing communities, regional fisheries management organizations, local governments, and local communities comes into play.  Until local people recognize the importance of healthy sharks to healthy oceans, the unique life histories of sharks that make them particularly vulnerable to overfishing, and that in many cases a shark is worth far more alive than dead to local economies, this scene will continue to play out.  To date, ten nations have stepped forward to demonstrate shark conservation leadership at the local level through the creation of shark sanctuaries.  Coupled with regional fisheries reform measures, and now strengthened by the enhanced protection derived by the new CITES sharks and rays Appendix II rules, we are seeing real reason for cautious ocean optimism.

The post New Obligations and Continuing Challenges in Shark Conservation first appeared on Deep Sea News.