100 Years of Data Reveals Why Sharks Keep Stealing Your Catch

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Picture this.

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You feel the strike.

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The rod loads up, line screaming,
drag singing, and for a few

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seconds, you're winning.

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Then the rod goes light, you reel up fast,
and what comes over the gunwale is a head.

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Just a head.

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Clean bite behind the gills.

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Sometimes not even that, sometimes
just the bare hook and a story n- that

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nobody at the dock is going to believe.

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If you fish the Atlantic Coast,
you will already know this feeling.

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And if you love the ocean, you need to
understand what it means, because the fish

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that never made it to the boat  is quietly
turning some of the ocean's biggest fans

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against one of the most important animals.

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Today, we are talking about shark
depredation  and a brand-new study

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that looked back at a hundred years to
figure out why this is happening now.

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If you don't know what shark
depredation is, essentially

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it's sharks eating the fish.

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So it's like sharks competing
with anglers  and fishing.

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So it's quite an interesting way
of looking at things, and we're

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gonna talk more about it today.

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But this is the How to Protect the
Ocean podcast, and I'm Andrew Lewin.

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Every weekday, I take one ocean
story  and hand you one thing

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you can actually do about it.

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No doom for the sake of doom,
just what is happening, why it

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matters, and where you fit in.

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If that's your kind of thing,
hit that follow button right now

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so you don't miss an episode.

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I post every Monday to Friday.

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It's the easiest way
to help this show grow.

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Now, here's the question
I want to sit with today.

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What if the thing that is frustrating
anglers all along the coast  is actually

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a sign that we did something right?

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Because that is the strange
knot at the center of the story.

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Shark depredation is going up.

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Anglers are angry, and a lot of them
are pointing at shark conservation

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as the villain, believe it or not.

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A new scientific study published in
June in the ICES Journal of Marine

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Science, decided to test the idea by
doing something nobody had done before.

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They tracked one hundred years of
shark depredation across the entire

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Atlantic Coast from Maine all the way
down to Texas  and the US Caribbean.

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What they found is going to reframe how
you think of every one of those bite offs.

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So let's get into it.

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Now, here's part one of the main story.

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What is actually happening on the water?

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First, the word depredation.

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It sounds technical, but it's simple.

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Depredation is when a shark bites or
steals a fish you've already hooked

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before you can get it into the boat.

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You did the work.

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You found the fish.

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You set the hook.

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You started the fight, and a
shark collects the paycheck.

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This has happened to me once
before in the Gulf of Mexico.

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It's quite frustrating.

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This is not new.

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Fishermen have dealt
with it for generations.

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Ernest Hemingway built an entire
novel around it back in 1952.

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But the anger around it now
is real, and it is growing.

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And that is what sent this
team of scientists digging.

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The study was led by Dr.

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Marcus Drymon  at Mississippi
State University, working with NOAA

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Fisheries and a group of regional
experts and graduate students.

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And here's why it matters.

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This is the first time all these
regional specialties  pooled their

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knowledge into one coast-wide picture.

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Before this, everyone had their
own local piece of the puzzle.

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Nobody had the whole board.

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So what does the whole board look like?

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It is bigger and messier
than anyone ever expected.

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The team documented at least fifty-one
different fish stocks that anglers

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target getting hit by  depredation.

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And on the other side of that
equation, twenty-two different species

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of shark doing the depredation.

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That's a lot of species.

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Fifty-one target fish,
twenty-two target species.

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That is not a single problem.

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That's dozens of problems
wearing the same coat.

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And the two sharks showing up most
often,  bull sharks and sandbar sharks.

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Hold on to those two names because they
are going to matter in just a minute.

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One of them you're allowed to keep, one
of them you're not, and that difference

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is a big part of this whole tangled mess.

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Dr. Drymon put it plainly.

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He said, "At its core, this is about
overlap,  overlap between people

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and wildlife, both reaching for
the same fish at the same time."

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And if you want to understand why the
overlap is growing,  you have to look at

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what has been happening to the sharks.

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Part two, why now?

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The recovery nobody talks about.

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Here's the part that most people miss.

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Let's go back to the
1980s and early 1990s.

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Atlantic shark populations
were getting hammered.

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Overfishing, finning, almost no rules.

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Some coastal species were
pushing way, way down.

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Sandbar sharks, the exact species
now showing up in these bite-offs,

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were among the hardest hit.

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So in 1993, the United States
put its first real shark

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management plan into place.

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Quotas, limits, protections.

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Over the following years, it got stronger.

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Finning bans,  species
put completely off limits.

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And then something remarkable happened.

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It actually worked.

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Imagine, you put policies
together and it actually worked.

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A 2023 study in the Journal of PNAS
looked at coastal shark populations

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before and after that 1993 plan.

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It found nine wide-ranging
coastal shark species recovering

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after decades of decline.

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The researchers were
direct about the cause.

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Well-enforced management and
science-based limits prevented population

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collapses that were otherwise coming.

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NOAA's own surveys tell the same story.

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Dusky sharks, sandbar sharks,
even white sharks are turning

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up more often than they used to.

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And the sandbar sharks
specifically, the directed fishery

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for them was shut down in 2008.

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Anglers cannot keep one today.

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They're still officially rebuilding on
a plan that stretches all the way to

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the year 2070,  but the trend is up.

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Now, put those two facts side by side.

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More sharks in the water, and more anglers
on the water than ever, reeling in fish.

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More sharks plus more
lines equals more overlap.

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More overlap equals more stolen fish.

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The depredation is not proof
that conservation failed.

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In a lot of cases, it is the shadow
cast by conservation working.

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And the numbers around it is eye-opening.

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One major review of global research
found depredation rates ranging

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anywhere from about 1% of the catch
on the low end to more than a quarter

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of your catch on the high end,
depending on where and how you fish.

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A national angler survey out
of 2022 found that more than

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three-quarters of anglers said that
they had experienced depredation,

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with Florida as a major hotspot.

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But here's a detail
that really stopped me.

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That same research estimated that nearly
80% of the depredation happens unseen.

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You never watch the shark do it.

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You just feel the line go slack and
reel up the evidence, which means

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that most of the time, the angler is
left to guess who the culprit was,

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and guesses, especially angry ones,
are not always fair to the animal.

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Part three: The problem hiding underneath.

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So far, this might sound
like a frustrating story.

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Annoying, sure, but is it
really an ocean problem?

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Yes, and this is the part
I most want you to hear.

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When a shark eats your hooked
fish, that fish is still dead.

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It still came out of the population,
but it never gets counted.

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In fishery science,  that is what they
call dead discard, a fish that died

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but never showed up on the logbook.

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The NOAA study flagged this directly.

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Depredated fish are effectively dead
discards that are not well documented.

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And in some cases, that unaccounted
mortality could throw off the

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stock assessments we use to manage
those fish in the first place.

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Read that again.

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The bite-offs are not just costing
anglers a fish and a bad afternoon.

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They are creating a blind spot
in the data we use to keep

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those fish populations healthy.

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That is an ocean problem.

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That is a management problem.

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That is everybody's problem.

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And here's the hard truth
the researchers landed on.

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There is no simple fix.

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Fifty-one targeted species, twenty-two
shark species,  every one of them

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managed by different rules in
different states and federal waters.

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Bull sharks can be harvested.

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Sandbar sharks cannot.

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There is no one solution
that works across all of it.

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What the scientists recommend
instead is a combination.

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Keep testing shark deterrent devices.

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Keep the sustainable shark fisheries
we do have running smartly.

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And above all, keep scientists,
fishermen, and managers talking to

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each other instead of past each other.

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Because the alternative, the bumper
sticker solution of just killing more

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sharks, would quietly unravel one
of the few big marine conservation

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wins this country already has.

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Quick pause.

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If this episode is connecting the
dots for you,  do me one favor.

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Share it with the person who fishes.

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Just one.

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This is the exact kind of
story that gets flattened into

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sharks bad at the boat ramp.

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And you passing it along is how the
fuller picture actually travels.

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Okay, let's talk about
what you can do now.

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Here's the takeaway I want
you to carry off the water.

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Shark depredation is real.

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The frustration is legitimate.

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Nobody is asking anglers to smile
while sharks eat their dinner.

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But the story underneath it is
a conservation success story

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wearing an inconvenient disguise.

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Sharks are bad, and the goal now
is not to reverse that, is to

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learn how to share the water.

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So here's where you come in.

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Same day, real and honest about
what you can do and cannot do.

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If you are an angler, scientist points
to a handful of small moves that add up.

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Move spots more often instead
of grinding one honey hole where

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the sharks have learned to wait.

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Get your fish up faster when
you can,  so there's little

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time for the shark to close in.

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Try lures or jigs instead of soaking
bait,  since less scent in the

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water means less of an invitation.

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And stop dumping fish waste
right where you're fishing.

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None of this is a magic switch, of
course,  but researchers who study

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this are clear that stacked together
they can add up to a drop in bite offs.

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You can also test a
deterrent with clear eyes.

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Some electrical and magnetic devices
have shown real promise in field trials,

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buying you extra seconds to land a fish.

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Others on the market have almost no
independent evidence behind them.

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So treat the flaky marketing claims with
a healthy dose of skepticism,  and look

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for actual testing before you spend.

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And whether or not you fish, the
biggest thing that you can do

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is protect the story yourself.

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The next time you hear someone at the
dock or someone in the comment section

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say the answer is just to cull the sharks,
you now know enough to gently push back.

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You can say that, "The sharks coming back
is a win.  The bite-offs are a management

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puzzle,  not a reason to undo decades
of recovery." And one more,  if you

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fish and you get depredated, report it.

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NOAA and its partners are
actively building better ways to

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log these events, because right
now, most of them vanish unseen.

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Your report helps turn the 80% of the
invisible bite-offs into real data,

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and better data is what keeps both the
fish and the sharks managed honestly.

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And that is the whole idea.

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You do not have to choose between healthy
fisheries and healthy shark populations.

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The science says you can have both, but
only if we stay at the table together.

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That's the episode.

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If you got something out of it, follow
the show wherever you're listening, and

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share it with one of your angler friends.

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I read the messages, so if you've felt
depredation firsthand, tell me your story.

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Hit me up on the social media
links in the show notes, and I

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might read on a future episode.

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But that's it for today's episode.

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If you wanna support the
podcast, please, do so by going

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to speakupforblue.com/patreon.

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You can support me on Patreon by going to

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I'd love your support.

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I do a lot of work on this, and
the podcast, YouTube channels,

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all social medias like TikTok
and Instagram and Facebook.

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If you feel like you wanna support
and you're in the area to support,

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I would love for you to support.

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And join a community of people who wanna
get together and talk about the ocean.

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That's it for today's episode.

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Thank you so much for joining
me on today's episode of the How

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to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.

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Have a great day.

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We'll talk to you next
time,  and happy conservation.