Project: Shark Research Institute survey of sharks fished off of Manta, Ecuador

Goals: Survey (species, sex, maturity, size) sharks fished off of Manta, an Ecuadorian port town. Collect data (over time) to show unsustaneability of shark fishing in local waters.

June 24, 2004 - Guayaquil & Manta

The bus ride from Guayaquil to Manta was a harrowing experience filled with maneuvers like the "tailgate the huge truck marked "peligro - inflamable" and the classic "pass the car in front of you during a blind turn." But hey, it took us less than four hours to get to our hotel (the Hotel Las Gaviotas), which is right across the street from the beach where fishing boats come in to offload their catch to traders. After arriving, we took advantage of the waning daylight to scope out the beach, which was littered with colorful trash. Most of the fishing boats had already pushed off for the night, but a few stragglers were still floating around. After walking for about five minutes along the water, we were warned by someone not to continue (something about being beat up by a gang). At this point, we decided that it might be a good time to turn around. Carlos Villón, the director of the marine studies program at the University of Guayaquil, has been a tremendous help; none of us are very good at speaking Spanish, and his knowledge of the local industry is vast.

Dinner was a strange affair; the food was fair and inexpensive at our little restaurant along the waterfront, but the service was pretty bad. Drinks never came, and individual bills followed the end of the meal, one by one (very slowly!). A good number of the bills were simply wrong, but most of us just paid what was listed ($2.50-$3.50) instead of making a fuss about $0.50 in overcharges. We were also hassled by no fewer than twenty vendors trying to sell flowers, candy, and useless trinkets.

Walking back from dinner, we were passed by at least three large trucks packed full of large yellow-fin tuna; the beach-front is definitely dominated by the local fishing industry. During our leisurely saunter, we were frequently overcome by the smell of rotting fish carcass mixed with sewage. Either that, or someone was out eating stinky tofu.

The locals don't seem to know what to make of our motley group, and I'm getting used to encountering blank stares wherever we go. SRI's Alex Antoniou has proven to be consistent in his quest for chocolate Magnum bars, and researcher Matthew Potenski draws fascinated stares from small children, whose mouths drop open as they crane their necks to see his dreadlocks hanging some 6' 3" from the ground.

June 25, 2004 - The Beach @ Manta

$2 in Manta will buy you:

• A taxi ride for four in and out of town or...
• A steamed fish dinner with rice, fried plantains, and vegetables or...
• The bloody jaws of a scalloped hammerhead shark and a big-eye thresher shark or...
• 2 lbs of sardines or ...
• 1 lb of fresh yellow-fin tuna

... whereas $150 will buy you the fins and body of a medium-sized shark like a thresher. It is no wonder that sharks are being fished here off of the coast of Ecuador without any restraint.

At 5:40am this morning, we left our hotel and walked outside into the darkness onto the beach, where a few fish traders had already set up stations to wait for incoming pangas filled with the previous night's catch. The local fisherman and traders are used to researchers coming in to measure and study the dead sharks, so we didn't have any problems mingling with them, although I was asked "quien paga?" (who is paying you?) a few times. I feigned ignorance and replied, "turista." Cameras draw a lot of attention from adults and children alike; many of the locals like to pose for a photo with the sharks they are trying to sell, and for $1 they will cut out the jaw of a shark for you to take home as a souvenir.

The first load of sharks that came in consisted of small dogfish and juvenile hammerheads, but as mid-morning approached more sharks started to come in. Here's a list of some of the species of fish we saw on the beach today: scalloped hammerhead shark + unknown species of hammerhead shark, big-eye thresher shark, pelagic thresher shark, blue shark, mako shark, silky shark, dogfish, stingray (Dasyatis sp.), yellow-fin tuna, at least 3 types of billfish (blue marlin, pacific sailfish, striped marlin), eels, dolphin fish, and wahoo.

I was particularly impressed with the size of some of the threshers and blues (nearly 3m long), which came in mostly as by-catch from the huge boats docked at the industrial fishing pier not far from the beach. But there were a few large threshers and scalloped hammerheads that had been caught by some of the small pangas that the local fishermen operate out of. We were told that there are approximately 4,000 small fishing boats operating out of the area, and many of the boats operate offshore for two nights at a time before coming back in with their catch. Whereas in previous years a boat could be filled with sharks, tuna, and billfish only five to ten miles offshore, fishermen now routinely have to lay their lines fifty miles offshore to come back with a decent catch. We even heard rumors that some of the boats venture as far as 200 miles offshore!

I strayed from the group a few times and ventured into the market area of the beach, where traders set up shop to sell fish. I struck up a conversation with a nice local in my broken Spanish, and he introduced me to a few of his friends. They seemed to be surprised that I would walk around with two conspicuously valuable cameras hanging from my shoulders, and advised me to be careful of thieves in the area. Most of the people we've encountered here so far have been friendly, but some of the more salty guys working on the beach have been a little gruff. The fact that every local we've talked to has expressed concern for our safety is worrysome.

June 26, 2004 - The Beach @ Manta

The fisherman and traders were more frenzied today, and fish were brought in at a more rapid pace. Early in the morning, a good-sized bull shark was hauled up from a small boat, eventually fetching $350 when sold to a trader (again, most of its value is in its fins). Like yesterday, the majority of the day's catch consisted of large blue sharks, large thresher sharks, and small hammerhead sharks. A pregnant thresher was cut open, and Carlos pulled two well developed juveniles from her womb. Baby thresher sharks practice interuterine cannibalism (the larger babies eat their siblings), so a typical brood might consist only of one or two individuals. Juvenile threshers shimmer with a beautiful purple sheen, and their skin is silky soft to the touch. We were told that young threshers are a delicacy, and the two pups were sold almost immediately.

The frigate birds are getting more aggressive, and one of them actually smashed into me while swooping down for a bit of shark gut. The local children are following suit with their own version of aggressive curiosity. One little girl kept repeating "chino, chino," affirming the obvious: I look Chinese. She then switched to exclaiming, "Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!" which was amusing for about thirty seconds, but after ten minutes I felt like bludgeoning her with one of the dead blue sharks laying at my feet. I'll bet Jackie could do that pretty easily.

I can't help but anthropomorphize the sharks that are being hauled up to the beach. Threshers always look surprised, and seem to be saying, "oh, shit! I'm dead!" through their open mouths as they gaze blankly from their huge eyes. I've always wanted to see thresher sharks and blue sharks; it's unfortunate that the first ones I'm seeing in my life are being cut up into pieces. It's not as bad as it could be, however. Most sharks that are slaughtered are killed for their fins alone, their carcasses thrown back into the ocean to rot uselessly. The shark carcasses hauled up at Manta are sold for their meat, and there are laws banning the export of shark fins, which legally can only be sold locally.

Alex tells me that ten years ago, a day's catch at Manta might be 1,000 or more sharks, whereas these days the catch seems to vary seasonally between 150 and 400 sharks a day. Combined with having to venture 50 miles or more offshore, it is pretty clear that the local shark population is dropping rapidly. While we were observing the action on the beach, I kept looking across the water at the industrial fishing boats docked at the pier and wondering what sort of catch they were delivering. This local operation is nothing compared to the large Taiwanese-funded finning vessels that are raping the oceans.

As a seafood eater, it may seem a bit hypocritical for me to even comment about marine conservation, but even those of you out there who eat seafood must admit that the practice of shark finning is extremely wasteful and unsustaineable. I recently attended a rehearsal dinner for a friend's wedding where shark fin soup was served, and I felt sick sitting there watching everyone eat them. I was even tempted to get up and leave. With over 100 million sharks killed each year (much of the activity is illegal), the ocean's top predator is dying off quickly. People tend not to care about sharks because they aren't considered to be "cute," but removing the top predator in any ecosystem is a catastrophic move. (Nevermind that the shark itself is an amazing animal so well evolved that it has barely changed in the last 400 million years!)