{"id":4253,"date":"2018-10-13T23:14:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T03:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=4253"},"modified":"2018-10-16T10:25:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T14:25:48","slug":"tag-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/tag-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Tag Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s dusk on a Tuesday in the middle of summer and Assistant Professor Keith Dunton and his students are intently eyeing the fishing rods they\u2019ve cast out along the shoreline in Cape May, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been quiet so far, but now that the sun is setting and the warm tide is rolling in, the team is looking to spot a particular pull of the line that signals a potential catch. The smallest tug can indicate to them the difference between a wave rolling out and a bite from what we\u2019ve all come here to see: a shark.<\/p>\n

This is the team\u2019s second outing in a week, and since they didn\u2019t catch anything on their first night, the mood is anxious, but hopes are high. As they wait, they chat with the two fishermen from Apex Anglers\u2014experts in landbased shark fishing who are on hand to help\u2014about music, their favorite hiking spots, and shark tales.<\/p>\n

Just as dark clouds roll in and the beachgoers begin to recede from their turf, the ticking of a line spurs action.<\/p>\n

\u201cGot one!\u201d everyone seems to yell in unison as they jump into overdrive. Dan D\u2019Alessio of Apex gets to the line first. \u201cYou have to keep the line firm,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t have any slack because they\u2019ll have the opportunity to spit the hook.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students quickly grab the tools they\u2019ll need: a blue stretcher, measuring tape, scissors, tweezers, a knife, test tubes, an acoustic tag, a dart tag, and a clipboard. If a shark is reeled in, the students will have just a few minutes to tag, measure, and remove parasites from it before release.<\/p>\n

\"Assistant
THE CATCH: Dunton casts a line into the Atlantic in hopes of hooking a shark.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It takes about 90 seconds to haul in what turns out to be a four-foot sandbar shark that puts up a fight, slashing about in the waves. Once it\u2019s close enough, Dunton picks it up briefly to transfer it from the water to the stretcher, walking it a few feet onto the shore, before placing it down gently. The Apex crew removes the hook and stands by for assistance as Dunton begins his work.<\/p>\n

He lays the shark on its side as two students firmly hold it down, two hands on the head and two below the dorsal to keep it from biting and squirming. Dunton makes a small incision of two centimeters on its underbelly, where he places a 3.75-inch acoustic tag that he refers to as \u201cE-ZPass for fish.\u201d It will allow him to track the shark\u2019s movements up and down the Atlantic coast for the next decade.<\/p>\n

The students make note that this is a female, before their professor flips the shark right-side up to affix a much smaller dart tag, with his contact information on it, just below its dorsal fin. The students measure the shark\u2019s total length and its fork length, which runs from its snout to the point where its tail fin forks inward. Dunton snips a small piece of the pelvic fin for genetic testing and the students scan for parasites, collecting any they can see with the naked eye.<\/p>\n

Once done, Dunton and the Apex fishermen carry the shark back out to the water for release. The whole operation lasts about five minutes, and just as quickly as the action came, it\u2019s gone, and the students and their professor settle back down into their beach chairs to wait for the next one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got started in this because land-based fishing for sharks is becoming a hot topic,\u201d says Dunton. \u201cIt\u2019s getting a lot of interest right now, especially down in Florida, where there\u2019s a lot of people that fish for sharks from land or piers. They\u2019re catching really big sharks, and certain species suffer higher mortality than others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shark fishing is a big industry, especially in New Jersey, where the winner of the South Jersey Shark Tournament, held off the coast over two to three days, can win a purse of over $300,000. The problem, says Dunton, isn\u2019t necessarily the experienced fishermen. It\u2019s the inexperienced ones who incorrectly \u201cland\u201d sharks, meaning they fish them onto land, often dragging them through the sand and surf zone, and keeping them out of the water for extended periods of time, which can lead to post-release mortality. Because no boat is needed, it\u2019s significantly cheaper and easier for the inexperienced to buy equipment online and fish from land\u2014 all that\u2019s needed is a basic saltwater fishing license.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem isn\u2019t the fishermen who are out there all of the time,\u201d says Dunton. \u201cIt\u2019s the people that may be on vacation who want to give it a shot by themselves. But the problem is, if you\u2019re not used to catching sharks, what do you do with it if you catch one?\u201d<\/p>\n

An inexperienced fisherman may be unable to properly de-hook a shark, leading them to simply cut the line for release, which can leave the shark with a hook in its mouth and sometimes 10 to 20 feet of fishing line behind it. Dragging the shark through the sand can cause damage to its gills, which do not have covers, and keeping it out of water to sit on it and take photos with its mouth open causes stress.<\/p>\n

Not to mention, if the hook is improperly set, certain species like the sand tigers\u2014which are gulp feeders\u2014can get the hook lodged in their stomachs.<\/p>\n

Dunton says many shark species have suffered population declines due to being caught as by-catch or being harvested for their meat. And because sharks are long-lived and late maturing, an increase in mortality due to improper fishing, combined with these other factors, can be detrimental to a species.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome sharks can live to be 60 to 70 years old, and don\u2019t mature until they\u2019re 10 years of age, so if you harvest them, you can really knock out a population,\u201d says Dunton. \u201cSo, particularly the sandbar and sand tigers are prohibited because they were harvested in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

An issue that arises with fishing in general, Dunton says, is that you never know what you will catch. It\u2019s up to the angler to be able to spot the difference between species, as some can be harvested for meat and others can\u2019t, and some species, like great hammerheads, are illegal to land at all in certain places.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the prize sharks down in Florida is a great hammerhead. [They\u2019re] critically endangered and they don\u2019t handle stress very well\u2014just the hour fight of catching them, kills them,\u201d says Dunton. \u201cBut the theory is that you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re going to catch one, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Prof. Keith Dunton and his research team arrive at the beach in Cape May, New Jersey just before dusk as the beachgoers head home for the night.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
Troy Ohntrup, a junior MEBP student working with Dunton for his summer research project, baits a hook.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
Dunton and his students place sharks directly from the water onto a stretcher to keep sand from entering the shark's gills.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
Dunton sutures up a sandbar shark after inserting an acoustic tag in its underbelly. The tag will allow Dunton and his students to track the shark for a decade.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
The research team measures each shark for both its total length and fork length.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
The team also scans the shark for parasites, collecting any that they can spot with the naked eye.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
The team poses for a quick picture before releasing this sandbar shark back into the Atlantic.<\/div><\/div><\/div>

 <\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this year, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission unanimously voted to direct its staff to hold public inquiries and draw up stricter regulations for those seeking to fish sharks from land. One idea being considered is requiring a special license for anglers looking to land sharks.<\/p>\n

Dunton says part of the problem when it comes to sharks is that there are many unknowns because they have been largely understudied, leaving scientists without a good handle on how the industry affects various species. This includes sharks that are native to New Jersey, like the sandbar, sand tiger, and dusky shark, all of which are currently prohibited from being harvested.<\/p>\n

While NOAA runs the Apex Predator Program in Rhode Island, and OCEARCH tags white sharks along the Atlantic Coast, New Jersey\u2019s coastal sharks have not been largely studied, save for young sharks in the Delaware Bay, a nursery ground for these native coastal species.<\/p>\n

To fill this gap, Dunton set out not only to study shark mortality post-release for those sharks fished by conservation-minded fishermen\u2014which provides a minimum mortality estimate\u2014but also to map the demographics as well as spatial and temporal migratory patterns of New Jersey\u2019s coastal sharks.<\/p>\n

\u201cSharks in general don\u2019t get the kind of attention they deserve … no one has really paid attention to what is going on in the coastal areas,\u201d Dunton says. \u201cSo, I thought it would be a great opportunity for my students and me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summer 2017 was the first time Dunton and students from Monmouth\u2019s Marine and Environmental Biology and Policy (MEBP) program tagged sharks as part of their summer research project. Partially funded through the School of Science\u2019s biology department and the Urban Coast Institute, Dunton\u2019s students, with help from Apex Anglers, dorsal fin\u2013tagged 53 individual sharks over a 12-week period. Of those tagged, 15 sharks were also surgically implanted with the Vemco V-16-6H acoustic transmitters, which tracked the sharks\u2019 movements for the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the transmitter does is, it sends out a unique signal every minute and a half to be picked up by the acoustic receivers that we have placed around the ocean,\u201d says Dunton. \u201cWe have 15 to 18 receivers now in Northern New Jersey. We work with the NJDEP, which has receivers close to where we fish in southern New Jersey, so between us we cover at least the span of New Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to those receivers, Dunton also has partnerships with various institutions and organizations including the ACT Network, a collaborative group of researchers who share data. The groups have acoustic receivers from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the Gulf of Mexico, and once or twice a year the researchers pull the data at their respective receivers and send it to Dunton and his students, who then organize it to see the movements of their tagged sharks.<\/p>\n

The students this past summer were the first to both tag sharks and interpret a year\u2019s worth of data collected from sharks whose acoustic tags pinged up and down the coast over the last 12 months. What they found was low mortality when sharks are properly fished by experienced anglers. They also found that the larger species, like the sandbars, travel further distances\u2014swimming as far south as North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve realized that we\u2019ve been catching mainly juveniles, so they\u2019re younger, which can be a problem because you don\u2019t want the babies to die\u2014you want them to survive,\u201d says Lauren Kelly, a junior MEBP student. \u201cIt seems like the sand tigers are the ones traveling further south than the sandbars and, we caught mostly sandbar females, which is another thing we\u2019re trying to see\u2014 why are we catching mostly females?\u201d<\/p>\n

This past summer, Dunton, along with his MEBP students, including Kelly, Charlie Vasas and Troy Ohntrup, tagged a total of 54 sharks\u201418 of which were sandbar sharks that were implanted with acoustic transmitters and will be studied by next summer\u2019s cohort of summer researchers.<\/p>\n

For the MEBP students, this was one of their first hands-on experiences in the field doing research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got into this because I love sharks and care about shark conservation,\u201d Vasas says. \u201cI never really had that hands-on experience\u2014I was always just like, \u2018I care about shark conservation.\u2019 But now that I\u2019ve actually physically touched the sharks, and brought them on land, and did research and collected data on them, it makes me care even more about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Assistant
THE RELEASE: Dunton guides a tagged sandbar shark back into the ocean in Cape May, New Jersey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dunton is steadily building a baseline database of information that will soon include genetic data, which can be cross-referenced with data from the Delaware Bay shark nursery grounds to help determine lineage and population estimates.<\/p>\n

All of the information Dunton and his students are compiling can be used to support real-world legislative and policy decisions, like those taking shape in Florida now, with shark conservation in mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn doing this research I wanted to get an idea of what I actually wanted to do with marine biology,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cIt was a great experience to be able to see that our work\u2014it\u2019s not like we\u2019re just doing it to do it\u2014it actually means something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next summer, Dunton plans to expand the project to include more local fishermen and hopes to begin working with local bait shops to encourage them to display or hand out brochures with NOAA guidelines, which outline best practices when it comes to shark fishing.<\/p>\n

For now, he is looking forward to next season, when he\u2019ll get to work with another set of students who will get to experience for the first time what it\u2019s like to catch a shark.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with the students I find to be amazing, and research like this is always awesome to do because I feel like this one experience can really change the course of their career or life,\u201d says Dunton. \u201cJust to see their pure excitement at seeing their first shark, and then for them to actually work on it and collect samples, is obviously really amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monmouth researchers are tracking sharks off the coast of New Jersey in an effort to better understand how improper catch and release affects their numbers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":49,\"y\":62}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Features","issue":"Fall 2018","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4253"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4738,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions\/4738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}