Estimates of Shark at-vessel, Post-release Mortality, and Retention Ban Effects on Stopping Overfishing

Sharks are among the most threatened groups of exploited fishes, comprising common bycatch across many fisheries. Management efforts intended to safeguard threatened species have increasingly focused on retention bans to reduce bycatch mortality. However, the population effects of such measures remain unevaluated across species. We combined available data from 160 studies providing estimates of at-vessel or post-release mortality for 147 taxa caught by different fishing gears to create random-forest regression models and predict mortality rates for 341 shark species incidentally captured by longlines or gillnets. Smaller-bodied species inhabiting shallow waters were more likely to suffer at-vessel mortality compared to their deep-water counterparts, which were more likely to suffer post-release mortality. We then use results for longlines to simulate the effect of retention bans in reducing fishing mortality to sustainable levels. Our metric consists of the ratio between the proportion ..., , , This \_readme_datasetname file was generated on 20/08/2024 by Leonardo Manir Feitosa

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GENERAL INFORMATION

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Author Information:

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Principal Investigator: Darcy Bradley

Associate or Co-investigator: -

Primary Contact: [e-mail]

Alternate Contact(s): -
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Date of data collection: end date - 25/06/2024

Information about funding sources or sponsorship that supported the collection of the data:

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This work received funding from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Brazil) under project number 001 and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Award 2139319).
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PROJECT INFORMATION

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Project name: Retention bans are insufficient to stop shark overfishing

Project description:

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Here, we develop a new dataset of at-vessel (AVM) and post-release (PRM) mortality for elasmobranchs, obtained through a literature review o...