Dogfish: A species in danger? Spiny, prevalent shark on verge of receiving global protection By Patrick Anderson Staff Writer
Fishermen will tell you that spiny dogfish — a hungry, aggressive species swarming nets and hooks up and down the East Coast — can take care of themselves.
But to their dismay, the plentiful small shark species that's been called everything from a pest to a plague could soon join animals such as bison and iguanas as protected international endangered species.
The European Union has sponsored the dogfish for a listing with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that could quash the already fragile market for a fish many say is devouring more commercially valuable food fish.
The protections being proposed would require seafood companies to secure federal permits for every shipment of dogfish that leaves the country.
Given the speed needed to bring fresh seafood to market, that bureaucratic hurdle might make exporting dogfish, which are not consumed domestically, unfeasible.
"It would make things very difficult," Kristian Kristensen, CEO of Zeus Packing on Gloucester's Harbor Loop, said this week. "We don't know how we would get around it if it goes into place."
Even if the permitting isn't too slow to allow exports, some have speculated that placing the "endangered" tag on the species would destroy the market for the fish in eco-friendly Europe.
Zeus is one of a handful of companies on the East Coast where dogfish are processed and landed — and the only such facility in Gloucester. Zeus handles around 5 million pounds of the species a year, Kristensen said, a third of the company's business.
Loosing that market would be a major blow, he said.
"If it is listed, I will have to lay a lot off people," Kristensen said, including dogfish cutters specially trained to handle the shark's tough skin and two venomous spines.
Never a particularly popular fish among American consumers, the dogfish market is centered in Europe, where it is known as rock salmon. The British use it in fish and chips and the Germans smoke the belly flaps. Kristensen said he has also shipped dogfish to Italy and France.
As fishermen began landing more dogfish in the 1980s and 1990s, stocks of the species dropped significantly, especially in Europe, and governments on both sides of the Atlantic instituted strict catch limits.
In North American coastal waters, dogfish stocks have rebounded significantly in the past 10 years, leading managers controlling fishing in state waters to increase the quota for them by 50 percent last spring and federal regulators to increase the quota by 200 percent last November.
The reason catch limits have not been loosened even further is the relative scarcity of large, mature female dogfish to smaller males in surveys by federal scientists.
Environmental groups say the species' slow growth and reproductive rates make them vulnerable to population collapse.
Almost all the science on dogfish has been disputed, leading to new surveys and research either under way or beginning soon.
East Coast fishermen — including an alliance of commercial and recreational anglers called Fishermen Organized for Rational Dogfish Management — have argued that not only is the demise of dogfish greatly exaggerated, but the hungry predator is devouring groundfish and more valuable commercial species that regulators are trying to rebuild.
Allowing more dogfish landings, FORDM argued in a letter to NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco in May, would not only let the fishing industry benefit from a species that is now fouling nets and being thrown out as bycatch, but also help species that it eats, like cod and haddock,
The letter, asking for a review of dogfish policy, has been largely dismissed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In the last round of changes to the CITES endangered species listings two years ago, the United States voted in favor of adding spiny dogfish to Appendix II of the protected list, the same designation proposed now. (Appendix I is the most protective and bans all trade of a species.)
In that round of changes, the listing was narrowly voted down.
For the upcoming CITES vote, which will take place next March in Doha, Qatar, the Obama administration has not decided yet how it will vote, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which represents the country on CITES, said yesterday.
But unlike 2008, this time around the United States will not be including dogfish on the group of species it is actively sponsoring for a listing, which includes six other types of shark.
Political pressure from Atlantic fishing states likely played a role in the decision not to include the dogfish in the list of sponsored species.
This month, 26 members of Congress, including Sens. John Kerry and Paul Kirk and Reps. John Tierney and Barney Frank, all of Massachusetts, have either signed or written a letter to the Obama administration asking for U.S. opposition to the dogfish listing.
Among the questions being asked by the American fishing industry about CITES is whether the listing would stop exports in North America, where the stocks have rebounded, but allow trade of the species within the common market of the European Union.
For Kristensen and Zeus Packing, the constant uncertainty of international endangered species restrictions, on top of domestic regulations, makes an already difficult business tougher.
"Nobody really knows what will happen," Kristensen said.
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