Mapping a Smoother Fishery for Smooth Dogfish

A commonly-used quote from John Shepherd states, “Managing fisheries is hard: it’s like managing a forest, in which the trees are invisible and keep moving around.” This is particularly true for highly migratory species like sharks, for which the full range is often poorly understood…

This One’s Optimistic

One of the perks of living within a reasonable driving distance of Washington D.C. is that you get to be around for major events.  Over the weekend I was present for two events that directly addressed the current and future state of science in the…

Gut Check

A few recent papers in the elasmobranch world have turned some popular assumptions about sharks and rays on their heads.  First and most high-profile was Grubbs et al (2016) dismantling the shark/cownose ray/scallop trophic cascade that not only became so entrenched that it actually ended…

Sharks at SciREN 2016

Last Thursday I participated in SciREN Coast 2016, which is my third year participating as a researcher and second year helping organize and promote it.  SciREN is a great event that brings North Carolina home-grown marine science (or in its sister event SciREN Triangle, all…

Atlantic Spiny Dogfish Sustainability Certificate Suspended

In 2012, the Atlantic spiny dogfish fishery became one of the first shark fisheries to be certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (the first was another dogfish fishery, this one targeting North Pacific spiny dogfish in British Columbia waters).  The MSC is the…

EU Considers Ban on Dogfish

Last week the European Union considered a petition to ban on all products made from spiny dogfish.  The petition, put forward by the representative from Germany, would have banned trade of all spiny dogfish products, and barring that called for changing the names of some…

Winter of the Shark: Brace Yourselves

One of the many projects that have been consuming time that could be spent blogging is the acoustic telemetry project ECU has been involved with off of Cape Hatteras.  Last year saw me take over the day-to-day running of this valuable piece of equipment, from…

Dogfish Fisheries: Too Successful for Their Own Good?

Things had been going pretty well for U.S. dogfish fisheries.  In June 2010, after half a decade of an essentially closed fishery, the U.S. Atlantic stock was considered rebuilt.  Shortly after, representatives of the fishery petitioned and successfully received sustainability certification from the Marine Stewardship…

Science Online Oceans: Storify Recap of #ScioFisheries

Here it is folks, the epic Storify of the session co-lead by Ann and I at Science Online Oceans.  It was a blast, and hopefully sometime soon I’ll get a chance to put up highlights of everyone else’s sessions as well.

AES 2013: Day 4

Today was the fourth and last day of presentations for this year’s AES.  The real shark week ended with a bang, featuring this year’s only concurrent pair of shark sessions.  As a result, I definitely missed some talks I wanted to see in order to…