Staying Alive, Part 4

Feature Story by Chester Moore

LISTEN: (6 minutes, 28 seconds)

 

SHARK POPULATIONS are on the rise. Although many species like the oceanic whitetip for example are far from recovery, many of the species more commonly associated with the Texas coastline have come back.

Overharvest, especially from commercial longliners had put a hurt on sharks, but more conservative regulations activated three decades ago, have helped.

“There has definitely been a rise in blacktip, spinner and bull shark populations along with some other species,” said Dr. Greg Stunz with the Harte Institute in Corpus Christi.

You might have seen Dr. Stunz on a variety of “Shark Week” programming as he has worked all over to conserve the oceans and keep populations of its apex predator healthy.

When asked if growing human populations along the coast combined with increased shark numbers was a recipe for more attacks, Stunz said shark attacks are still very rare.

“You have a very small chance of being bitten by a shark. You need of course to remain cautious in waters where sharks dwell and keep an eye out for certain things, but we shouldn’t have an overbearing fear of shark attacks,” he said.

Practical Tips

The first thing to keep an eye out for is the sharks themselves. If you see large sharks on a beach or while wadefishing in a bay, slowly head back to shore. 

Marcus Heflin of Christian Surf Fishing Adventures was chest deep in the surf at Sea Rim State Park a few years back when a seven-foot-long hammerhead swam by.

“I looked up and I got a little nervous, but the shark kept on swimming and minded its own business. It was beautiful to see but a little too close for comfort,” he said.

Fishermen often get into conflicts with sharks due to stringers loaded with speckled trout, redfish, pompano, or some other surf-dwelling species. You need to keep long stringers and make sure they do not float up to you. A shark taking a hunk out of a fish, doesn’t care if that also means striking your behind that is next to it.

The floating fish baskets work better by the way.

A product called Sharkbanz has shown much promise in reducing shark conflict. Capt. Kyle Johnson wade fishes and guides in the shark-infested Chandeleur Islands.

“We encounter a lot of sharks and constantly had fish being taken or hit on stringers. I tried Sharkbanz for a year and had zero incidents. We had some sharks come and then bolt away, as if something scared them,” he said.

The device works via the Earth’s magnetic field and messes with a shark’s senses. It comes in two versions, a wearable and a larger one called a Zeppelin you can attach to a fish basket.

If a shark does approach you, as strange as it might sound, punch it. 

Seriously.

Punch it as hard as you can in the nose and pray for the best. Many divers, surfers and waders have done this and lived to tell the tale.

Other things to consider are for women to stay out of the water when they are on their menstrual cycle and to avoid large baitfish schools. Big pods of pogies and mullets bring in sharks and sometimes big ones.

Texas Big Surf Sharks

Texans can potentially encounter many of the most dangerous sharks along the coast. Bull sharks, tiger sharks, lemon sharks and hammerheads are on most top 10 dangerous lists, and they are all here.

Bull sharks are the most likely of these to encounter due to their abundance in not only the Gulf but our bays. They can live in completely fresh water and for example are frequently caught near the mouth of the Neches River in Sabine Lake and around the Interstate 10 bridge on the Trinity River, north of Trinity Bay.

Their grumpy nature is well-documented, but bulls are not the most common large species on the Texas Coast.

There are two species that can weigh more than 100 pounds and are overall more common than even bulls.

 

If you were to ask anglers whether these species were dangerous, most would answer with a resounding “No!” since they are not in the lexicon of deadly sharks. In fact, the Discovery Channel produced a highly rated program about the top 10 most dangerous sharks and neither made the list. 

Both the oceanic whitetip and shortfin mako did. However, those species rank far below both the blacktip and spinner in terms of unprovoked non-fatal attacks on humans according to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

ISAF data show blacktips are responsible for 36 unprovoked attacks.

Spinners have been responsible for 16 unprovoked attacks. For comparison, the oceanic whitetip committed 12 unprovoked nonfatal but also three fatal attacks. The shortfin mako dished out nine unprovoked nonfatal attacks and one fatal. If these species were abundant and were common on beaches there would no doubt be more attacks.

For reference bull sharks have 93 unprovoked nonfatal and a terrifying 26 fatal attacks, showing for Texas-centric sharks they are the most dangerous.

In the Discovery Channel’s defense, its list featured numerous factors, including fatalities and size. This would obviously put species like the great white above many other known attackers, but in terms of raw attack data, blacktips and spinners deserve our respect.

This is not to vilify these species which can be as acrobatic as a tarpon and put on an equal fight pound for pound. It is to make people think.

Just because a shark hasn’t killed someone doesn’t mean there isn’t a potential danger. Any shark can cause harm and we need to respect all of them, even species we often dismiss like blacktips and spinners.

Sharks are incredible, majestic creatures that have gotten more people interested in the oceans than all other things combined. We need to be good stewards of that resource, obey all size and bag limits and release those we do not wish to eat.

We also need to be cautious because sometimes sharks attack and we don’t want to end up on the negative end of any of these shark attack statistics.

—story by CHESTER MOORE

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