Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 1 Edward Island in 1988 while she fed on a whale carcass. More recently, in December 2013, a U.S. Marine hooked a nine-foot juvenile by accident on a beach in southern California and played the shark for nearly a half-hour before safely releasing it in deeper water. Accounts such as these are few and far between and, as of this writing, they're downright illegal. Great whites are listed as "Vulnerable" under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and enjoy more local and international protections than any other shark species worldwide. In the U.S., great whites are federally protected from both commercial and recreational fishing. The Marine in California knew the laws protecting great whites and immediately released the juvenile once he realized what he had hooked. F or the sport fishermen reading this story, please bear with me. My goal is not to crush your dreams of catching the world's most famed shark species. But like any other fishery, great whites must be managed scientifically. One-third of our oceanic shark species face extinction from overfishing and the morally reprehensible shark-fin industry, where people slice the fins off live sharks and toss the bodies back into the water to die a slow, painful death. Such wanton waste risks ruining the sport of shark fishing for those who seek to enjoy it responsibly. The first step for establishing a fishery is to learn about the species' life history. By tagging great whites such as Mary Lee and following them over their lives, we gain knowledge about their migrations, their generation time, and their nursery habitats. Only then can we predict population sizes, how many individuals we can sustainably remove through fishing, and then assign permits and licenses accordingly.