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  • Matters Arising
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Shark mortality cannot be assessed by fishery overlap alone

Nature volume 595, pages E4–E7 (2021)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 07 July 2021

The Original Article was published on 24 July 2019

arising from N. Queiroz et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1444-4 (2019)

Many shark species worldwide are vulnerable to overexploitation due to fishing. Using only the horizontal spatial overlap between the space use of 23 satellite-tracked shark species and the fishing distribution of pelagic longline fisheries tracked using an automatic identification system, Queiroz et al.1 concluded that sharks are at high risk when substantial horizontal overlap occurs. This approach to estimate fishing susceptibility, coupled with limited tag-based shark distributions to estimate fishing exposure index (FEI) hotspots, severely limits their findings and, therefore, conclusions.

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Fig. 1: Match or mismatch between FEI hotspots or shark density hotspots, and fishing effort hotspots.

Data availability

To prepare Table 1 and linear regressions between North Atlantic annual shark landings (FAO total capture production) and shark FEI as calculated by Queiroz et al.1, FAO statistics available from http://www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/global-capture-production/query/es were used following the description of the data by Queiroz et al.1. To produce Table 2 and Fig. 1, data from Queiroz et al.1 were used from https://github.com/GlobalSharkMovement/GlobalSpatialRisk.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. J. Williams for useful suggestions on a previous version of the Comment, which were very helpful in improving the manuscript. The views expressed by E.C. herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the agency of E.C.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, Washington, DC, USA

    Hilario Murua & Victor Restrepo

  2. Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Shane P. Griffiths, Jon Lopez & Alexandre M. Aires-da-Silva

  3. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Alistair J. Hobday

  4. Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Alistair J. Hobday

  5. Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction Tuna Project, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy

    Shelley C. Clarke

  6. NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Panama City Laboratory, Panama City, FL, USA

    Enric Cortés

  7. Pelagic Ecosystems Research Group, Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Eric L. Gilman

  8. AZTI, Marine Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Sukarrieta, Basque Country, Spain

    Josu Santiago & Haritz Arrizabalaga

  9. Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, Victoria, Seychelles

    Paul de Bruyn

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  1. Hilario Murua
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Contributions

H.M., S.P.G. and V.R. conceived the study; H.M., S.P.G., A.J.H., S.C.C., E.C. and E.L.G. wrote the manuscript with further input and revisions from all authors; H.M., S.P.G. and J.S. performed the data analyses and produced the figures and tables; all authors contributed to the interpretation and discussion of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hilario Murua.

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Murua, H., Griffiths, S.P., Hobday, A.J. et al. Shark mortality cannot be assessed by fishery overlap alone. Nature 595, E4–E7 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03396-4

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