It took millions of years of evolutionary honing for the shark to become king of the seas: the predator at the head of the aquatic food chain. And it’s taken only about 10 years more for the shark to be overmatched by the most deadly killer on earth-man. Each year tens sharks are killed worldwide for food, sport and by accident, caught in nets intended for shrimp, swordfish or tuna. (Sharks caught in nets cast for other fish are often clubbed to death aboard ship and tossed back.) So many are dying so rapidly that shark men like Gruber fear for the future of these species. Indeed, a coalition of environmental groups and fisheries scientists has been pressing a shark-saving plan on the U.S. Commerce Department since 1989. The Bush administration has never acted on the issue. If there is no plan by next month, shark enthusiasts may go to court or look to the “green” Clinton-Gore administration.
Selling the shark’s cause is not easy. Sharks are generally portrayed as mindless killing machines, more like the Saddam Husseins of the natural world than the kinds of animals that inspire films like “Born Free.” But just like lions or tigers, sharks are important predators and scavengers pruning weak and dying animals from their habitat. Still, few children fall asleep clutching a stuffed saber-toothed fish. But must we kill what we haven’t learned to love?
Thanks to “Jaws” I to IV, the great white is the most famous shark, but it’s not the biggest. The whale shark is roughly as long as a tractor-trailer but eats only the small fish and plankton it filters from the water. In all, there are more than 350 species of sharks, some as small as a trout. Gruber works mostly with lemon sharks (about eight feet long and 350 pounds). They tend to grow slowly and don’t reach sexual maturity for 15 years. Mother lemon sharks carry their offspring for 12 months and then give birth to about 10 fully developed babies. Only half of these survive their first year.
Four hundred million years of evolution have endowed sharks with some mighty advantages, including a super immune system. “We injected enough vibrio cholera into them to kill 10 horses, and they cleared them from their systems,” says Gruber. Scientists have also been amazed at the extremely low incidence of tumors among sharks-something that may prove to be valuable in cancer research. In other experiments, Gruber’s subjects were taught to swim mazes and retained the information for almost a year.
Such skills have allowed sharks to reign over the oceans for millennia-that is, until modern humans began take an interest in harvesting their meat and fins. The commercial shark catch in the North Atlantic alone climbed from 148 in 1979 to more than 7,000 tons in 1989. It has decreased ever since-a sign that too many sharks are being taken from the sea. That figure doesn’t include the accidental catch, which is just as big a haul. “Many of these species were in decline before the commercial-fishing industry took off,” says Steve Branstetter, supervisor of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s shark project. “That was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Backs-technically dorsals-are just what are being broken. The shark’s comes equipped with a fin that has become one of its fatal attractions. Throughout Asia, shark-fin soup is enormously popular. The harvesting of the fins, known as finning, is very cruel. Ship crews snare a shark, cut off its fin, then toss the squirming fish back into the ocean. Unable to maneuver, the shark is left to sink and die. Shark meat has also drawn attention from chefs seeking a low-priced substitute for scallops. Armed with a sharpened cookie cutter, a clever fishmonger can turn a dead shark into thousands of succulent, and perfectly round, scallops. They’re cheaper, firmer and about as tasty when cooked with oil and garlic.
Since 1989 biologists have been asking the secretary of commerce to develop a plan to manage the declining North Atlantic shark population. These rules of engagement would set limits on how many sharks could be taken per boat and restrict finning. Drafts have since gone through at least two revisions and enough public hearings to sink a trawler. But, says Tom Hoff of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, “it fell into the black hole in Washington. It really has been tied up with bureaucracy and politics.” He speculates that strong lobbying efforts by the fishing industry combined with the deregulation ethic of the Reagan and Bush eras thwarted the conservation efforts. Bill Fox, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, denies that political pressure had an effect, but he does acknowledge a certain amount of frustration with the approval process. “Fisheries management in the U.S. is a complex process that takes much too long,” he says. Last month the NMFS announced yet another delay in publishing a final plan. Fox hopes to have a final version by mid-January.
Back in the waters off Bimini, Gruber stands inside a holding pen cradling a two-foot-long juvenile lemon shark upside down in his hands. The shark is in a sleeplike trance after Gruber’s expert manipulations. A doctoral student makes a small cut in the animal’s belly to insert a Tootsie Roll-size tracking transmitter. Thunder rolls in the distance and lightning illuminates approaching storm clouds. As the wind picks up, Gruber orders most of the team ashore, leaving behind only a small group to shine lights on the outdoor operating theater. A final stitch closes the incision enough to last until the morning and better weather. The team hurries in just ahead of the rain. “There’s not a lot of people in their right minds who would stand out there with lightning and thunder and operate on sharks,” he says later. “I consider it a war on ignorance.” A war that Gruber and other shark lovers stand a very real chance of losing.
