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The Shark Hunter
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The Shark Hunter
HomeSci-TechMedicalFeaturesProfilesMarriage PerilBio
by Douglas Page, © 1998
Ken Goldman knew as a boy how he would spend his life. On an ocean fishing trip as a youngsteronce, Goldman was beguiled by sharks the instant he saw a Mako climb from the water like a slicing,grey missile and filch a catch from a fish line. "I just thought it was an outrageously beautiful fish. Evenas a twelve year old kid I felt a thing that beautiful couldn't be evil. Fish aren't evil."Soon thereafter the book, and then the movie, "Jaws" exploited public fear of the Great White Shark, inthe process motivating Goldman to seek a more meaningful balance. He become a professionalmarine biologist.Now Ken Goldman stalks sharks. Not to claim trophies or to rid the world of a what some consider amenace. Goldman tracks sharks in search of knowledge, filling a void pivotal to the very survival ofsharks as a species.There is a critical lack of information about shark numbers, behavior, biology, distribution and lifehistory. The less reliable information, the more public indifference and hysteria there is about sharks.Without a clearer public appreciation, shark numbers will continue to dwindle. They are already indanger of becoming more an echo than a song.Sharks suffer from the same low public image as wolves, bats, spiders and snakes. Militant ignorancehas cast all these species as sinister predators, thanks in part to such enduring fables as "The ThreeLittle Pigs", "Little Miss Muffett" and prurient movies like "Dracula", "Jaws" and "Arachniphobia".Goldman, now an elasmobranch ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at GloucesterPoint (the school of marine sciene for the college of William and Mary), is one of a special breed ofscientist devoting their talents to the study of sharks and to shark conservation, who bob around on theocean rim, waiting with their sensors, their tags and their awe, hoping to enlighten us about the detailsof creatures so much of which remains unknown or misunderstood. Sharks are not, for instance, theravenous man-eaters portrayed by popular myth."Worldwide, there are probably 70-100 shark attacks [on humans] annually, with between five and 15deaths," said George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum ofNatural History, which maintains an historical record of nearly 3,000 shark attacks. According to theLos Angeles County Museum of Natural History, more people in the U.S. are killed by pigs each yearthan by sharks.As a result of so much prolonged, negative publicity, some shark species are hunted and slaughteredwith such an indiscriminate vengeance their very existence as a species is now threatened. Millionsmore die in the webs of the longline swordfish and tuna fisheries - drift nets 50 km in length that danglein the sea like drapes of death, trapping every creature in their paths, including whales, turtles andsharks. Finning - the practice of fin amputation for the benefit of those with a taste for shark-fin soup -leaves unknown numbers of discarded, mutilated sharks to drift to bottom to die. Sharks, lacking swimbladders found in other fish, have no natural buoyancy. If they stop swimming they sink. Just one 'fin'boat can maim 200 sharks a day.Even in shark fisheries low reproductive rates in most sharks makes them vulnerable to over fishing.There is a history of collapse in past shark fisheries. In California the soupfin shark (
C. zyopterus)
 supported the commercial fishery in the 1940s. "That shark population crashed after World War II,"said Burgess. "Even today, 50 years later, the population has not recovered its former abundance.When shark biologists talk about the frailty of sharks from a fishery standpoint, it's built on the fact that
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The Shark Hunter
recovery is a decades-long process, not a yearly process."Sharks need their image rehabilitated but, since they aren't likely to attract the image magicians fromMadison Avenue, they'll have to settle for the Ken Goldmans of the world.From the efforts of Goldman, and scientists like him, the body of reliable shark knowledge grows at apace similar to the rate of shark maturity and reproduction. Slowly. Shark research is different than thestudy of other living things. Birds, bears and bacteria can be tracked or observed mostly at theconvenience of the researcher. Shark research, however, is more often at the convenience of theshark. If a shark doesn't approach the researcher at or near the surface of the ocean very littleresearch is possible. "We know a lot more than we used to," said Goldman, "but when it comes to a lotof basic biological questions - gestation, reproductive frequency, where they mate, how long they live -we don't know very much. There's a lot of science to be done."Goldman is currently involved in three projects addressing the void of elasmobranch information,including a study of white shark (
C. carcharias)
feeding behavior off California; a fisheries biologyassessment of several species of shark in the Atlantic; and an effort to discover aging, growth andpopulation demography of salmon sharks in Alaskan waters.Only the Atlantic study is funded, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)and the Virginia Marine Resource Council. The other two efforts are self-funded. "It's very hard tryingto get money to do something no one has ever done," Goldman said. "
THE FARALLON ISLAND WHITE SHARKS
"With the white sharks we've been looking at their body temperature because they're a warm blooded,thermal regulating animal, which is unique for sharks," said Goldman. Of the 370 species of shark,eight species, including
C. carcharias,
have a vascular system that lets them thermoregulate. Whitesharks, like tuna, possess rete mirabiles, sites of heat exchange that allow the shark to retain heatgenerated internally rather than lose it through the gills as all other fish do. White sharks have threeretia, located in front of the liver, in the muscles above the viscera and in the area above the eyes andbrain. Before Goldman's work it was thought the white shark maintained a body temperature eight to10 degrees above ambient seawater; if the water temperature dropped five or six degrees the shark'sbody temperature would likewise fall. Goldman has shown that's not the case. "I've been able todemonstrate that their body temperature is a constant 26.5 degrees C regardless of the surroundingwater. I believe they evolved this mechanism to allow them to hunt swift, agile prey even in cold water.Without the ability to regulate body temperature they couldn't do that."Goldman obtains body temperature data from readings taken inside shark stomachs. Many whitesharks collect at the Farallon Islands, 30 miles west of San Francisco's Golden Gate, to feed on juvenile elephant seals that populate that region of the Pacific. At certain times each autumn Goldmanis already there, waiting on the walk of the Southeast Farallon Island lighthouse for the feeding tobegin. "We observe about one shark attack a day through October or November," Goldman said. "Thisis a unique situation that allows us to study the behavior of the animals in natural predatory scenarios.We aren't baiting or chumming or putting any attractants in the water."For the seven years Goldman has stalked the shark in the Farallons, he and his team (consisting ofindependent researcher Scot Anderson and Point Reyes Bird Observatory field biologist Pete Pyle)use a 17-foot Boston whaler. A prime objective while examining shark feeding behavior is to avoidbecoming part of the meal. "The boat lets us get right into where the feeding is going on," saidGoldman, "close enough to pat a white shark right on the head. We put a transmitter in the water on alittle piece of seal blubber while an attack is occurring. When it gets eaten this gives us internal bodytemperature based on stomach temperature."It sounds more simple than it actually is. Only three sharks swallowed the transmitter during one recenttwo-year period. There are abstract rewards, though, even when research objectives are delayed.Having a white shark swimming next to your small boat does not so much inspire fear as awe. "It'sfantastic to see such a majestic predator in its own environment," said Goldman. "The more we learn
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The Shark Hunter
about the life history and habits of white sharks the more we can dispel the myths about a 'man-eatingcreature'. Through science we can come to realize what they actually are - a well evolved, remarkablybeautiful and integral part of our marine ecosystem."Up close to the shark Goldman is also able to get tissue samples with a biopsy needle he's developedfor a companion genetic study. "We also put other tags externally on the shark, designed to track theirmovements, look at their swimming depth and figure out their space utilization," he said.Tagging is necessary even to obtain age and growth data because most sharks do not thrive incaptivity. Tags are inserted on or below the first dorsal fin. When the same shark is recaptured andmeasured researchers can determine how long it's been tagged and how much it has grown duringthat period. One school shark, thought to be 20 years old when tagged, was recaptured 33 years later,indicating a life-span of at least 53 years.Researchers studying the migratory meanderings of land animals are beginning to tag their subjectswith transmitters that employ the Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS, however, doesn't work underwater so different methods must be devised to track shark ocean excursions. This fall Goldman isscheduled to start attaching pop-off satellite transmitters to some sharks that will eventually yieldswimming depth, route and distance data. "We want archival data so we're putting a data-logger on thefish that has a time mechanism. After 90 or 120 days the tag will release from the fish and come to thesurface and upload its data to a satellite."One of Goldman's recent findings refutes the popular notion that white sharks are insatiable, eating-machines. "Based on what I've seen with certain individual sharks we recognize at the Farallons," saidGoldman, "they may feed only every three or four weeks, and it wouldn't surprise me that they golonger than that. They may go longer and they may be opportunistic and feed on a fish now and thenwe don't see, but when you figure if you're consuming 150 or 200 kg of seal blubber all at once that'sgoing to last you a while."
DEMOGRAPHICS OF SANDBAR AND SANDTIGER SHARKS
Frequently, when Goldman is not in the Farallons he can be found in waters off Virginia assessingpopulation demographics of sandtiger (
C. taurus)
and sandbar (
C. plumbeus)
sharks. "My goal is touse some new population models to be able to forecast population numbers better, to help NOAA andthe National Marine Fisheries Service regulate the species." Sandbar sharks, especially, are a hugepart of the Atlantic commercial fishery. Goldman's research is important because their population isthought to have declined 80 percent in the past 15 years.With the sandtiger Goldman is attempting to determine age and growth parameters on a fish very littleis known about. "Yet here's an animal that fits the pattern of sharks extremely well. It grows veryslowly. It takes a long time to reach sexual maturity. When it finally reaches sexual maturity it probablyonly pups two pups every third year. We don't know what age they live to. So any mortality on thisspecies has a large impact."The age of a shark is determined the same as a tree - by counting rings. "I'm in the process of injectingsome animals with oxytetracycline (25 mg per kg of body weight), which adheres to the calcium thatgets deposited in the sharks' vertebra. You can age a shark by counting calcium rings in the vertebra.When the vertebra is examined under an ultraviolet light you get a big phosphorescent band. So, if Iinjected a shark a year ago, then look at the vertebra today, maybe there are either one or two bandsof calcium between to outer margin and the phosphorescent ring. That would tell me if that shark isdepositing one or two rings in its vertebra per year. That means an enormous amount to understandingthe biology of the fish. Does the fish mature at six or 12? Does it live to 25 or 50? Not having thoseanswers makes regulation almost impossible."Regrettably, the only way to examine the treated vertebra is through euthanization. "That's theunfortunate process that leads to the end," said Goldman. "You have to euthanize a number of animalsand take the vertebra out so that you can regulate the rest of the species. At this time there is no otherway to age sharks except by the rings in their vertebra."
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