Plentiful and Ferocious Shark Lurks In Local Waters
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News
staff
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| Spiny dogfish. Credit: National Ocean Service |
The Atlantic spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is the
poor cousin to the more-alluring sharks of greater size and fame. They have
sharp, albeit little, teeth, are ferocious predators, and are opportunistic
feeders. They like to devour mackerel and herring.
Spiny dogfish can arch their backs and inject venom into
predators from their dorsal spines. They are harmless to humans — although a
jab from one of their dorsal spines could get infected — but they have been
observed biting through fishing nets to get at prey, according to the National
Marine Sanctuary Foundation.
They migrate into local waters in the warmer months, and
some remain through the winter. But most stocks are highly migratory, and they
spawn in the winter in offshore waters. Spiny dogfish females have between two
and 12 eggs per spawning season.
The spiny dogfish is the most abundant shark in the
western North Atlantic, but they aren’t the only species of dogfish swimming in
local waters. Like the spiny version, the smooth dogfish or dusky smooth-hound
(Mustelus canis) can be found in Narragansett Bay. The chain dogfish
(Scyliorhinus retifer) can’t. It’s also, confusingly, known as a chain
catshark.
This small, biofluorescent dog/cat shark can be found in Rhode Island Sound, at a depth of 180 or so feet, according to Adam Kovarsky, Save The Bay’s lead aquarist. The average depth of Narragansett Bay is only about 25 feet, he noted.
Save The Bay’s Newport aquarium has four smooth dogfish,
and Kovarsky runs a breeding program for the chain dogfish. Born in captivity,
the juveniles, at about a year of age, are released into Rhode Island Sound.
The aquarium currently houses four breeding pairs of chain dogfish. Kovarsky
said the breeding adults are swapped out annually.
“They live just fine in shallow water in our aquarium,
but they reside in deeper water,” he said. “And I think part of that is they’re
extremely well adapted to low light. Their nighttime vision is ten times better
than a cat’s night vision, and a cat’s vision is way better than ours. So at
night it basically looks like daytime to us.”
Since the Save The Bay program started in 2015, some 700
juvenile chain dogfish have been released into Rhode Island Sound, according to
Kovarsky.
The three species share the same surname but these sharks
aren’t closely related. At 1.5 feet, the chain dogfish is the smallest of the
local trio. Spiny dogfish males grow up to 3.5 feet and females grow up to 4
feet, with a maximum weight of 22 pounds. Smooth dogfish are similar in size
and weight to their spiny cousins.
While spiny dogfish are voracious predators, smooth and
chain are both primarily scavengers. Their mouths don’t contain sharp, hunting
teeth. In fact, according to Kovarsky, smooth dogfish have crushing plates,
almost like molars, in the back of their jaws. They use them to eat crustaceans
and mollusks.
So why are spiny dogfish the species most people have
heard of? Kovarsky shared his theory.
“They’re more like a classic shark in a lot of ways,” he
said. “Like when people think of a shark you know they have the sharp teeth.
People tend to gravitate towards dangerous things because it’s interesting.
[But] spiny dogfish are very safe to be around. You literally have to get your
finger in their mouth like very purposely.”
(The click-bait headline plays to that danger.)
Like all sharks, spiny dogfish grow slowly, mature late
in life, and live a long time — 35-40 years in their case. Besides humans,
dogfish are preyed upon by cod, red hake, goosefish, larger sharks, seals, and
each other.
Spiny dogfish doesn’t have an appetizing ring to it, so about a decade ago, in an attempt to make the fish sound more appealing, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, New England fishers, and conservationists rebranded it as “Cape shark.”
This ongoing effort to create
local demand for a plentiful regional species, which grew in number with the
collapse of the cod fishery, still hasn’t taken hold, but the dogfish fishery
is the largest shark fishery in the United States.
That’s because there is a nonlocal market for the shark.
In Britain, it’s wrapped in newspaper as the key ingredient in a popular
restaurant staple. Millions of pounds are harvested here annually, frozen, and
sent overseas.
The dogfish fishery operates from Maine to Florida and
from inshore to offshore waters on the edge of the continental shelf. The
fishery primarily uses bottom gillnets, with lesser amounts caught by trawls
and hook gear, according to NOAA Fisheries.
The fishery is managed jointly by the Mid-Atlantic
Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) and the New
England Fishery Management Council, with the MAFMC in the lead to
develop management actions that impact the fishery in federal waters. An
Atlantic spiny dogfish fishery management plan was implemented in 2000 in
response to the classification of the stock as overfished in 1998.
The fishery’s management plan includes all federal East
Coast waters. Harvest is primarily controlled through daily trip limits and an
annual quota that closes the fishery in federal waters if the quota is reached.
With its mild white boneless flesh, dogfish, said Kate
Masury, executive director of Eating with the Ecosystem, is less flaky
than cod but just as delicious. It also has a milder taste, she added.
Eating with the Ecosystem, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit
that promotes a place-based approach to sustaining New England’s wild seafood,
is working with consumers, chefs, suppliers, processors, and fishers to build a
local market for dogfish.
The region’s seafood consumption is heavily dominated by
five classic and diminishing New England species: lobster, sea scallops,
soft-shell clams, cod, and haddock. Oysters have also become a popular seafood,
thanks to a growing number of aquaculture operations.
Many of the most abundant species off the New England
coast, including spiny and smooth dogfish, skate, whiting, and Atlantic
butterfish, which is often caught as bycatch in the growing squid fishery, are
hard to find at seafood counters or on menus.
Masury recently told ecoRI News that only a few local
places actually serve it, including Dune Brothers in Providence (Cape
shark on the menu), and few fishmongers handle it. She said Boston-based Red’s
Best buys most of the dogfish caught in local waters.
“They’re one of the few dealers that will buy it and
process it, because sharks, like dogfish, if you don’t handle them correctly,
it can definitely be not the best smelling and not the best taste, and it can
have a shorter shelf life,” Masury said.
Unprocessed shark meat may have a strong odor of ammonia,
due to the high urea content
that develops as the fish decomposes. The urea content and ammonia odor can be
reduced by marinating the meat in lemon juice, vinegar, milk, or salt water.
“U.S. wild-caught Atlantic spiny dogfish is a smart
seafood choice because it is sustainably managed and responsibly harvested
under U.S. regulations,” according to NOAA Fisheries.
The fishery has been certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council since 2012. The dusky smooth-hound fishery is also stable, according to fishery officials.
Thousands swim together in packs, making them easy for
fishers to catch. Regional and local management plans are also in place,
including in Rhode Island, where
commercial operators can land 7,500 pounds a day.
Dogfish, however, doesn’t pay the bills like cod once
did, which is why few fishers focus solely on these sharks. Masury said a small
boat based out of Point Judith fishes for dogfish and a few Cape Cod fishers
out of Chatham also fish for the shark.
For decades, spiny dogfish were an annoyance to local
fishers. They were a “trash fish” with little value that often ended up
clogging their nets. The large spines on their fins made them a pain (sometimes
literally) to throw back, and they eat pretty much everything smaller than
them, including juvenile cod.
The industry’s attitude toward the aggressive and
relentless predators has since changed, with the disappearance of cod and
Europe’s appetite for fish and chips and beer snacks. Fishmongers use dogfish
“belly flaps” for fish and chips in England and as a popular beer garden snack
called “schillerlocken” in Germany.
In the 2022-23 fishing season, commercial landings of
Atlantic spiny dogfish were estimated at 12.6 million pounds, while
recreational harvest was estimated at 211,608 pounds, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).
Commercial landings continue to be mostly female dogfish, with female landings
comprising about 98% of the total commercial catch.
Discards have remained fairly stable, about 11 million
pounds over the past decade and are expected to remain near that level in the
future, according to ASMFC.
Prior to the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 —
better known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
Conservation and Management Act — foreign fleets caught the
majority of dogfish in U.S. waters, but U.S. fishers have had uncontested
access for the past 48 years.
