The Editor says: On March 20, 2019, a great white shark measuring 4.7 meters in length and weighing 1,170 kg was caught in Nanfang'ao, Yilan, Taiwan. Scholars called it the largest great white shark ever recorded (Apple Daily). Its belly contained 15 unborn great white pups. Photos spread widely through news outlets and social media, and the diving community erupted in a wave of condemnation toward the fishermen — but is it really as simple as everyone thinks? Let's hear a more balanced perspective from Shang-ju Pai, Chairman of the Taiwan Fisheries Sustainability Association, Shang-ju Pai.
I've already seen quite a few media platforms stoking public emotion for the sake of clicks — and this includes some supposedly professional pages. It reflects the fact that Taiwan is still a very long way from science-based fisheries management, still mired in a maudlin, irrational atmosphere. This will be a major obstacle for anyone hoping to advance sustainable fisheries. And I have a feeling that before long, someone is going to post asking about this — so I figured I'd take a little time and get ahead of it. 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈
This is a news story about a great white shark recently caught in Yilan — and its baby sharks. Well, pups! This isn't about ideology. It isn't about fishermen needing to make a living. This is a serious discussion about the state of the industry and the science of fisheries management.
Taiwan's media loves sensationalism and has always been fond of killing with headlines... because that's what you all love to read! But here in this association's community forum, we have an obligation to help everyone develop a sound, accurate understanding of sustainable fisheries.
Point One: "Taiwan's Fishermen Love Catching Sharks!"
Tell me — what fisherman wants a shark sitting in his hold? If that were true, why would there even be a shark finning problem in the distant-water fishing industry? This shark was an accidental catch — what's known as bycatch of a non-target species. What is "bycatch"? Bycatch is that thing where "I wasn't trying to catch you, but I caught you anyway." Think of it as an uninvited, clingy, nightmare ex who shows up regardless — and you'll get the idea.
Unless the shark had been specifically targeted and harpooned — like the sailfish fishery in Taitung — then you'd have every right to throw stones and say the fishermen were wrong to catch a shark.
With a harpoon or speargun, you can at least consider whether your freezer is big enough before deciding whether to kill. But if you have a solid understanding of fishing gear and methods, you'll realize that every single type of fishing gear and method involves bycatch to some degree.
Calling for a ban on catching non-target bycatch species... is nothing but a fake issue designed to harvest donations and sympathy. And it's not just net-based fishing methods that produce bycatch. Longline fishing bycatch of seabirds, sea turtles, and sharks has long been a headache for the international community, and simply improving fishing gear is not enough to eliminate the bycatch problem.
So does single-hook fishing avoid bycatch? In practice, it just means the fish gets unhooked and tossed back as a corpse. How else do you explain all those pufferfish baked to death by anglers on the shore?
Point Two: "Why Not Release It? It Had Babies Inside!"
Different fishing methods result in very different survival rates for different marine species. Fish caught by trawl nets or gill nets, for instance, are almost always either dead or completely incapacitated — while crustaceans can have quite high survival rates. Many of the live shrimp sold in markets are caught by trawl. And when it comes to a massive, aggressive shark like this one, releasing it becomes an even more daunting challenge — regardless of what method was used to catch it.
We all know that a great white shark in the wild won't normally attack humans — but this shark is in a situation where its life is under threat! A bunch of hairless apes are rudely dragging it into a world where it can't breathe. It has no claws... but it has razor-sharp teeth and a powerful tail! Or do you think the shark is going to dilate its pupils, wag its tail, and docilely surrender?
I know Aquaman can telepathically communicate with sharks, but that doesn't mean every fisherman is a superhero of the sea. "Hey! I'm going to release you! Please don't bite me!" If the great white turns around... it won't be grateful. It will bite you.
Of course that's not going to happen. Even with a sailfish — which just thrashes around like a game of poke-the-fish — any aggressive catch is going to get beaten back the moment it comes aboard. So there is no question of releasing it. There is only ever the binary choice of "dump it overboard" or "bring it back."
And would you even know whether the shark was a pregnant female with pups inside? Yes, male sharks are smaller — but that doesn't mean every large one is female. Or do you think you can deliver pups on a crowded, messy working fishing vessel? And even if it had been caught in a set net, it's not like a Whale Shark — which can be herded out of a net — this animal simply cannot be shooed away.
Point Three: "Isn't It Better to Just Dump It? Why Bring It Back?"
Under Taiwan's currently applicable "Great White Shark, Basking Shark, and Megamouth Shark Catch Control Measures," which have been in effect since 2013, any great white shark caught in inshore or coastal waters must be reported by filling out a "Great White Shark, Basking Shark, and Megamouth Shark Catch Data Reporting Survey Form" for submission to the fisheries authority. The Fisheries Agency then dispatches a designated academic institution to conduct scientific sampling and record biological data.
In other words, this fisherman complied with fisheries regulations, bringing the carcass back for subsequent scientific investigation. If the fish had been dumped at sea, do you really think any fisherman would go through the extra trouble of filing a report after returning to port?
This isn't a fish-landing declaration or an auction price call. If I say the fish was this big, it's this big — is that how scientific management works? What about body length? Body weight? Biological characteristics? Stomach contents? Can any fisherman fill in all of that just by eyeballing the catch in the water?
If it had been dumped at sea, this shark would have ended up like the manta ray — zero recorded catches across all of Taiwan! But does that mean no manta rays are accidentally caught? No — it just means every accidental catch gets dumped overboard, because nobody wants to create extra trouble for themselves. And this fisherman did not fin the shark and discard the body. Nor did this fisherman treat catching a shark as sport, the way some Americans do.
Point Four: "A Live Shark Could Generate Tourism Revenue — Abroad They Earn Millions Every Year"
The shark dive tourism operations abroad that earn millions are mostly built around docile, fish-eating reef sharks. Great white shark encounters mean divers going in a cage. To come across the kind of fat, relaxed great white that's been gorging on a whale carcass and is completely oblivious to everything around it — that's a once-in-a-millennium event. And the great white at the center of this story isn't some celebrity fish at a famous dive destination that fishermen barged in and plucked from a diving paradise. If it were — then yes, you'd be welcome to throw stones and say the fishermen did wrong!
Taiwan's conditions are nothing like those of tropical island nations. Pelagic, migratory sharks typically appear in Taiwanese waters in areas with strong currents, extreme depths, and significant distance from shore. They're also difficult to encounter in groups — most sharks in Taiwan are solitary free-rangers, even harder to track than the spinner dolphins leaping around off Hualien. How exactly would you develop a tourism industry around that?
In the central and western sea areas, large numbers of juvenile sharks will congregate in a little while — but the water there is murky with extremely low visibility, and the fishing grounds are very far offshore. Of course, if any operator wants to invest and take tourists to play in the mud with baby sharks, we'd be more than happy to ask the fishermen to help locate them! But the key point is this: a fishing ground is not a dive site.
Point Five: "It Only Sold for NT$50 per jin"
Its final destination was not a NT$50 bowl of Fuzhou fish ball soup. It was sent to the Taiwan Ocean Arts Museum to be made into a specimen — an educational exhibit for future generations to view.
And its scientific contribution is worth far more than NT$50 per jin. Because this catch had to be reported and documented by law, scholars now clearly know that the great white shark is viviparous — it does not lay egg cases like some shark species do.
Why have there been no previous records of great white sharks of this size — or their pups — being caught in this area? Now that one has been caught, can oceanographic and hydrographic data combined with regional fisheries surveys reveal anything new? This will certainly be valuable for understanding the species' ecology and formulating future conservation policies.
Can't we study live sharks instead — by fitting them with satellite tags, for instance? Satellite tags are expensive! And it's not as if just anyone can conduct a tagging operation. Besides, this shark was an accidental bycatch — is it really feasible to require every working fishing vessel to have trained personnel and tagging equipment on board at all times? Don't be naive. Even the distant-water observer program doesn't have observers on every single distant-water vessel.
In many advanced nations, fisheries statistical records are measured in decades of daily data accumulation. And even for species under fishing bans, annual fishing surveys are still conducted to evaluate whether reopening is warranted — that is what genuine sustainable resource utilization looks like.
Taiwan's inshore and coastal fish-landing declarations are barely crawling off the starting line. Scientific management requires the long-term accumulation of data. It absolutely cannot be replaced by populist, haphazard legislating — otherwise Taiwan's fisheries will forever be like a stock you're hopelessly trapped in. Or do you think that simply dumping everything overboard — an "out of sight, out of mind" approach to management — is what will allow fisheries resources to recover?
As for the shark fin issue — it's been beaten to death in this forum already. If you know anyone rich enough to gargle with premium shark fin soup three times a day, please ask them to come slap me in the face with their money ❤. And before heavy metal poisoning gets them, they'll definitely be on dialysis first from all the salt in that broth.
Finally, a question for the many self-appointed experts online who've been riding the populist wave and blasting away at this issue: where is your expertise, and where is your conscience? And don't shrink back now and say I'm being too emotional — because when you were stoking the masses and driving up your click rates, what kind of language were you using?
Cover image credit: Photo by Laura College on Unsplash (Note: the shark on the cover is not a great white — it is a ragged-tooth shark, Odontaspis ferox. The Editor would love to photograph a great white someday too ㄒ.ㄒ)
Full text reprinted with permission from Taiwan Fisheries Sustainability Association Chairman Shang-ju Pai, Shang-ju Pai.
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