Hawaii Community Tagging Program – Oceanic White tip Shark with an ID tag. Photo courtesy of Deron Verbeck, CX5A6723.JPG
Silver Spring, MD July 2021:
IBSS was awarded a task with NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) to provide shark bycatch and mortality reduction research services in support of the Hawaii Community Tagging Program.
Bycatch in commercial fisheries is harming pelagic shark populations worldwide. As a result, fishery managers have implemented regulations to reduce interaction rates and increase post-release survival of sharks. In recent years, oceanic whitetip and silky sharks have shown significant declines in relative abundance. Local fishers catch oceanic whitetip sharks and silky sharks with some seasonality, occasionally around Hawaii State Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs). Fisheries managers have called for local shark tagging studies to gain a better understanding of their basic ecology and stock structure in an effort to rebuild shark stocks. This tagging project is part of a larger effort with the major research objectives of elucidating shark affiliation, continuous residence times, and vertical migration behavior around anchored FADs as a means of identifying potential spatial bycatch mitigation strategies for commercial fisheries using FADs and to obtain a better understanding of the habitat use, ecology, and areas of biological significance of sharks around Hawaii. More information about the Hawaii Community Tagging Program can be found here: www.sharktagger.org
IBSS will support PIFSC’s mission to NOAA by:
- Providing logistical support to the community shark tagging project
- Initiating and facilitating investigations into the movements and post release survival rates of oceanic whitetip sharks around Hawaii
- Deploying tags on sharks caught off designated areas of Hawaii
- Training fishers about tags
- Maintain acoustic telemetry array
As a trusted NOAA partner for over 20 years, IBSS looks forward to our continued delivery of innovative science-meets-technology solutions that forward the NOAA mission and make NOAA’s science matter to constituents both at home and abroad.
