Australia Acts to Save Vanishing Grey Nurse Shark

CANBERRA, Australia, June 28, 2002 (ENS) - The survival of the grey nurse shark in Australian waters is in doubt due to decades of commercial fishing, recreational spear and game fishing, and shark control activities. Today Environment Minister Dr. David Kemp announced a Commonwealth Recovery Plan for the threatened shark. The shark is protected in the state of Queensland, and New South Wales has announced a critical habitat protection strategy, but conservationists say the governments must do more to help this shark recover.

"Grey nurse sharks were thought to be dangerous and large numbers of adults were killed by spear fishers in the 1950s and 1960s and by shark nets on many Australian beaches," Dr. Kemp said. "Despite their fierce appearance, these docile sharks mainly feed on fish, stingrays, other sharks, squids, crabs and lobsters. They are not known to attack humans."

"The development of this recovery plan sets a benchmark in ensuring the protection of this important marine species so that severely depleted populations can return to levels similar to those prior to human impact," the minister said.

Grey nurse shark (Photo courtesy NSW Fisheries)

In Australia, grey nurse sharks live in two separate populations, one on the east coast of New South Wales (NSW) and southern Queensland, and the other in coastal waters off Western Australia.

With numbers as low as 500 individuals, the east coast population has been listed by the Commonwealth as critically endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, while the west coast population is listed as vulnerable.

In all areas around the world where grey nurse sharks occur their numbers have declined. In response to this decline, grey nurse sharks there is a ban on taking grey nurse sharks in all three Australian states where they still live.

As yet there is no evidence that this as succeeded in stopping or reversing the decline in their numbers, according to the state agency NSW Fisheries. Grey nurse sharks have a low rate of reproduction, which makes them very vulnerable to threatening processes and very slow to recover when their populations are reduced. They are still threatened by incidental capture by fishers and illegal fishing activities such as shark finning.

Through a series of surveys along the entire NSW coast, 13 key aggregation sites for grey nurse sharks have been identified in state waters. It is proposed to declare them as critical habitat for the shark in a draft recovery plan released for public comment.

At the 13 key sites where groups of grey nurse sharks are regularly found, new fishing rules would be put in place for methods that have a significant risk of incidentally capturing grey nurse sharks. This would involve bans on the use of drop and set-lines by commercial fishers and a ban on the use of wire trace on fishing lines by all fishers from vessels not underway.

Grey nurse shark in one of NSW 13 key sites, the Julian Rocks Aquatic Reserve in Byron Bay. (Photo courtesy Planula)

A draft code of conduct for scuba diving with grey nurse sharks is being developed by NSW fisheries that would ban night dives in critical habitat areas, a ban on blocking cave entrances, and a ban on feeding, touching, chasing or harassing the sharks with horns or scooters.

But the Australian Conservation Foundation says the NSW plan does not go far enough to save the sharks. "It doesn't reduce the impact of beach netting programs and, apart from banning wire traces in these areas, does little more than ask recreational fishers to try not to catch grey nurse sharks."

The conservation foundation is urging stronger measures in New South Wales including a minimum no-take sanctuary zone of 1000 meters around each of the 13 nominated critical habitat sites in the grey nurse recovery plan to reduce the incidence of accidental hooking and protect grey nurse food resources.

"At some sites divers have seen 70 to 85 percent of adult sharks with fish hook injuries, says the foundation. "Many of the victims still have large hooks and wire traces embedded in their jaws and anus. Post mortems on grey nurse mortalities have revealed that septicaemia, as a result of a perforated gut from fish hooks, is often the cause of what would no doubt be a slow and painful death."

Australian Environment Minister Dr. David Kemp (Photo courtesy Office of the Minister)

"More than $455,000 has been allocated from the Natural Heritage Trust for activities to protect the species, including a project with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service to identify key grey nurse shark sites in Queensland waters," he said.

Dr. Kemp urged state governments to adopt similar measures and to work cooperatively with the Commonwealth to protect the grey nurse shark.

NSW says the state will consider its recovery plan a success when "the status of grey nurse sharks is revised from 'endangered' to 'vulnerable' and eventually de-listed from the schedules of the Fisheries Management Act."

The Commonwealth grey nurse shark recovery plan is available at:http://www.ea.gov.au/coasts/species/sharks

The New South Wales draft plan in online at: http://www.fisheries.nsw.gov.au/conservation/species/grey-nurse/home-grey-nurse.htm