“Unregulated overfishing coupled with corrupt and ineffective policy around the world,” says Tom, bluntly. It’s a statement that’s hard to argue with – targeted for their fins, meat, liver oil and more valuable ‘parts’ resulted in approximations as high as 273 million sharks being pulled from the sea and killed in the early 2000s. “Many sharks make vast migrations every year – the Blue Shark swims across the Atlantic to feed in the UK, for example – so, realistically, although we can control what happens to sharks in our waters, we’re helpless when it comes to what happens to them further afield.”

Announced in August 2021, the UK is soon to bolster its reputation as a global leader in marine protection by becoming the first European nation to ban the import and export of detached shark fins and those products which contain them. It’s a move that’ll undoubtedly benefit global stock of the UK resident Blue Shark, the top species impacted by ‘finning’ – the practice of cutting the fin off at sea and throwing the helpless body back into the water to die slowly, and one that is already illegal in our home waters (despite gaping loopholes being exploited by foreign vessels). But it’s hard to think the difference will be anything but negligible, given that it’s a species protected by just a handful of national catch limits around the world. 

“The UK is soon to bolster its reputation as a global leader in marine protection by becoming the first European nation to ban the import and export of detached shark fins”

“Sharks live long and breed late, often with small litters,” Tom says, when I ask why shark populations are finding it difficult to bounce back. “Take the Great White. A big female might not be ready to have a litter until she’s 20 years old, and even then, she’ll produce two pups, perhaps more. Then again, there is just so much we don’t know about these sharks and their birthing patterns. We’ve never seen them birth, and we don’t even know where they go to do it.”

It’s a fight that is no doubt engaging to read about – another chapter of schadenfreude in the story of our destructive attitude towards our planet. But with the main antagonists making bloody waves on the other side of the planet and the protagonists hidden deep underwater, you’d be forgiven for thinking, “Yeah? So what? I live in the UK. This isn’t my problem?”.

Unfortunately for you, it is.

“If we don’t make widespread change in the next fifty to one-hundred years, we won’t see the end of sharks, sharks will see the end of us,” Tom prophesises. “Remember, we’re the Blue Planet. Oceans create 50-80% of the oxygen we breathe and it’s phytoplankton – microscopic marine algae – that turns carbon dioxide into oxygen. If overfishing continues and shark numbers dip low enough, we can anticipate an unfathomable boom in the population of jellyfish right around the world’s oceans, which would uncontrollably ravage the levels of phytoplankton they feed on.

“Not only do sharks predate on jellyfish, but they regulate the health of other fish that predate jellyfish also – if weak and sick fish aren’t picked off then disease creeps into that species, and science has shown that the populations drop far lower than with regulating predators in the picture. And when both the sharks and the jellyfish-eating fish are removed, we’re looking at huge problems – global food and water shortages that would inevitably lead to war.”

“It’s a premonition that seems almost too sci-fi to believe – spineless lumps of leggy goo the ultimate downfall of humanity”

It’s a premonition that seems almost too sci-fi to believe – spineless lumps of leggy goo the ultimate downfall of humanity. But if you were part of the record numbers of staycationers in Cornwall this summer, there’s a strong probability that you’ll have noticed how Compass Jellyfish are now as much a staple feature of the Great British Summer Holiday as ice cream and sand in your sandwiches. Even steaming out of Penzance harbour with Kieren, we plow through huge blooms of them – more than our skipper has ever seen before, he tells us. 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Tom adds after his depressing predictions. “I would love to pull the cord and drop the bomb and say ‘There’s no way back! It’s FUBAR!’. But as scientists, we have to be careful, we have to be accurate. Yes, shark populations are critical, but humanity must take its foot off their throat. We can heal the hole. It has to come from us.”

“The protection has led to 25-times more sharks inside the reserve than immediately outside it. This is the story of how sharks can bounce back”

Places like Misool Eco Resort are an example of that healing. Situated in the far-flung south of Indonesia – one of the world’s biggest players in the export of shark fins – it’s a diving and conservation area built on a former finning camp that has transformed 300,000 acres into a protected marine reserve where finning, harvesting of turtle eggs, and the (absolutely insane-sounding) practice of cyanide fishing is banned, leading it to become one of only a few places on the planet where the quality of reef is improving year on year.

“It gives me hope,” says dive instructor and conservationist Jo Marlow, who has worked with the Misool Foundation for six years now. “There are now multiple shark nurseries all around Misool. Reports show that the protection has led to 25-times more sharks inside the reserve than immediately outside it. This is the story of how sharks can bounce back.”

Back on the boat as we head homeward after 11 hours of bobbing about on the sea, I ask Kieren, perhaps with a small pang of guilt, how what we’re doing is in anyway playing a role in the protection of sharks and our oceans.

“I get asked that question a lot on the boat these days,” he says. “It’s a real subject in the angling community. Ask any fisherman and he or she will agree that fishing ‘is not what it used to be’. I am a fisherman first and foremost, but I’m a fisherman that’s trying to influence and encourage in the right responsible direction. We’ve got to learn from the greed and impact of previous generations, because down here we’re not totally guilt-free. Forty years ago, it was common for sharks to be caught in Cornwall and hung up on the pier as a trophy. But over time, a decrease in numbers – helped by our overfishing of Cornish sardines – saw a movement towards catch and release.

“Fundamentally, it’s a form of employment that will rely on healthy shark numbers and help to make them more valuable alive than dead”

“Now, things are thriving. A few years ago, a regular season would see 300 sharks, but now the best season is up to 1800. Not only are we strictly catch and release, and keep the shark in the water at all times now, but all the sharks we catch today, and that I’ve seen through the season, will be recorded, along with the individual locations where we saw and released them. I’ll calculate a rough size for each, and as we’ve done for many years, will pass on that data to the Pat Smith Database – the biggest dataset for shark captures in Europe, and the second biggest in the world.”

“When it’s done correctly and with respect, it’s brilliant,” Tom reiterates to me later. “Currently fishing with a line and hook is the only way scientists can get close enough to study sharks. There’s no escaping the fact that they do feel pain and will register the experience, but that’s more reason to release it correctly, professionally and with respect. It’s a great way to educate through citizen science too, and fundamentally, it’s a form of employment that will rely on healthy shark numbers and help to make them more valuable alive than dead.”

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Blowfish’s Oceanopedia: 291 Extraordinary Things You Didn’t Know About the Sea is published by Atlantic Books. The Shark Trust UK is on a mission to safeguard the future of sharks through positive change. Learn more about what they’re doing at sharktrust.org. Learn more about Misool at misoolfoundation.org.

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