53 Recreational Shark Fishing Indicators

Description: Recreational Shark Landings

Found in: State of the Ecosystem - Gulf of Maine & Georges Bank (2021+), State of the Ecosystem - Mid-Atlantic (2021+)

Indicator category: Database pull with analysis

Contributor(s): Kimberly Bastille

Data steward: Kimberly Bastille,

Point of contact: Kimberly Bastille,

Public availability statement: Data sets are publicly available (see Data Sources below).

53.1 Methods

53.1.1 Data sources

All recreational shark fishing indicator data were downloaded from the Marine Recreational Information Program MRIP Recreational Fisheries Statistics Queries portal.

From the main Recreational fisheries statistics queries page, the download query link is available. From here the following selections made include:

Prompt Selected
Minimum Year 1981
Maximum Year *Max year available
Data Type Estimate: Catch
Wave Options All Waves
Geographical Area Not Specified
Species *26 Species outlined in table below
Output Download CSV as ZIP File

The ZIP file was used in the following analysis.

53.1.2 Data analysis

Data regions “4 = New England” and “5 = Mid-Atlantic” were selected for as to remove data from regions not relevant to the State of the Ecosystem reports. The data were then grouped into categories using the table below. This species list was the list used in the above “species” section in the MRIP query. Data were grouped by year, category and region, and the sum of all the landings for each was used as the indicator for recreational shark harvest.

Category Common Name Species Name
Small Coastal Atlantic Sharpnose Rhizoprionodon terraenovae
Small Coastal Blacknose Carcharhinus acronotus
Small Coastal Bonnethead Sphyrna tiburo
Small Coastal Finetooth Carcharhinus isodon
Large Coastal Blacktip Carcharhinus limbatus
Large Coastal Bull Carcharhinus leucas
Large Coastal Great Hammerhead Sphyrna mokarran
Large Coastal Lemon Negaprion brevirostris
Large Coastal Nurse Ginglymostoma cirratum
Large Coastal Sandbar Carcharhinus plumbeus
Large Coastal Scalloped Hammerhead Sphyrna lewini
Large Coastal Silky Carcharhinus falciformis
Large Coastal Smooth Hammerhead Sphyrna zygaena
Large Coastal Spinner Carcharhinus brevipinna
Large Coastal Tiger Galeocerdo cuvier
Prohibited Atlantic Angel Squatina dumeril
Prohibited Basking Cetorhinus maximus
Prohibited Bigeye Thresher Alopias superciliosus
Prohibited White Carcharodon carcharias
Pelagic Blue Prionace glauca
Pelagic Dusky Carcharhinus obscurus
Pelagic Oceanic Whitetip Carcharhinus longimanus
Pelagic Porbeagle Lamna nasus
Pelagic Shortfin Mako Isurus oxyrinchus
Pelagic Thresher Alopias vulpinus

53.1.3 Data processing

Recreational shark fishing indicators were formatted for inclusion in the ecodata R package using this code.

catalog link https://noaa-edab.github.io/catalog/rec_hms.html