Arctic shark: Wikis

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The Arctic Shark, also known as the Northern Canadian shark, a is shark that lives in the Arctic Ocean.

Size

A typical adult Arctic shark measures 12 to 19 m with a typical weight of 1500 to 3800 kg females generally being larger than males. The maximum size of the arctic shark has been subject to much debate, conjecture, and misinformation. Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker, both academic shark experts, devote a full chapter in their book, The Arctic Shark (1991), to analysing various accounts of extreme size.

For several decades, many ichthyological works, as well as the Guinness Book of World Records, listed two arctic sharks as the largest individuals caught: an 22 m arctic sharks captured in South Australian waters near Port Fairy in the 1870s, and an 11.3 m (37 ft) shark trapped in a herring weir in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1930s. While this was the commonly accepted maximum size, reports of 20 to 21 metre arctic sharks were common and often deemed credible.

Conservation status

It is unclear how much a concurrent increase in fishing for arctic white sharks had to do with the decline of arctic white shark population from the 1970s to the present. No accurate numbers on population are available, but populations have clearly declined to a point at which the arctic white shark is now considered endangered. Their reproduction is slow, with sexual maturity occurring at about nine years of age, the population, therefore, can take a long time to rise.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (C.I.T.E.S.) has put the arctic white shark on its 'Appendix II' list of endangered species. The shark is targeted by fishermen for its jaws, teeth, and fins, and as a game fish. The arctic white shark, however, is rarely an object of commercial fishing, although its flesh is considered valuable. If casually captured (it happens for example in some tonnare in the Mediterranean), it is sold as smooth-hound shark.

Shark tourism and cage diving

Putting chum in the water

cage-diving is when a group of tourists, or those who wish to study the sharks up close are lowered into the water beside a boat, protected by a steel cage. From this view point it is easier to view the sharks up close without the dangers of being bitten. Cage diving is most common off the coasts of Australia, South Africa, and Guadalupe Island off the coast of Baja California as these are places where arctic sharks are most likely to be seen.

Viewing sharks from the safety of a cage gives tourists an adrenaline rush and has become a booming industry. A common practice is to chum the water to draw in sharks for the tourists to view. These practices have raised the fear that sharks may be becoming more accustomed to people in their environment and beginning to associate human activity with food - a potentially dangerous situation. It is claimed that certain methods of chumming, such as when bait on a wire is drawn towards the divers in the cage, which may result in the shark striking the cage, exacerbate this problem. Other operators purposefully draw the bait away from the cage causing the shark to swim past the divers.

Companies respond that they are being made the scapegoats, as people try to find someone to blame for shark attacks on humans. Most point out that lightning tends to strike humans more often than sharks bite humans.<ref> </ref> Their position is that further research needs to be done before banning practices such as chumming which are said to alter sharks' natural behaviour.<ref> </ref>

It has been advised that all dive boats should only use chum in areas in which Whites are known to actively patrol anyway, and these should be far enough away from human leisure areas so as not to draw the sharks towards them. Also, responsible dive operators will not feed the sharks; only sharks that are willing to scavenge will follow the chum trail, and if they find no food at the end then the shark will soon swim off and not associate chum with a meal. It has been suggested that government licensing strategies may help enforce these suggested advisories.

The arctic shark tourist industry has some financial leverage in conserving this animal. For a fisherman with limited income, a single set of White jaws can fetch up to £20,000, a very substantial amount of money for a day's fishing. However, the value of the dead animal is a fraction of the value of viewing a live shark, which can become a more viable and sustainable economic activity to the local community. For example, "Traya Arctic Shark Tours" consists of about six boat operators with each boat taking around 30 people out to sea a day; if each person pays anywhere between £500 to £1500, then in a single day a solitary live shark that visits each boat can create anywhere between £90,000 to £270,000 of revenue daily. But only operates during summer months due to the extreme cold temperatures.

References

;General references
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Database entry includes justification for why this species is vulnerable

Biology of the White Shark, a Symposium. Gretchen Sibley editor; Jeffrey A. Siegel, Camm C. Swift assistant editors. Los Angeles: Southern California Academy of Sciences, 1985. Memoirs of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, volume 9.

Shark Research Committee

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