Abstract

For over twenty years the Archipelago has held a strong fishing pressure at an industrial level centered principally on the extraction of the spiny lobster, queen conch and demersal fishes (snappers and groupers). However, in the last five years a new fishery has emerged targeting shark species, but unfortunately it has not been monitored. This study documents for the first time this shark fishery and established that 13 species of these elasmobranchs were captured; the majority included in the red list of the IUCN under different risk categories. Only one species, Carcharhinus perezi, makes up the majority of the fishery, representing nearly 68% of all sharks captured. Thus, C. perezi is vulnerable to overfishing, a condition that is accentuated with the high proportion of juveniles that are caught. The shark fleet operates over different areas in the north of the Archipelago, with a large part of the fishing effort inside a recently implemented system of marine protected areas of multiple used. Shark fishing occurs over zones where industrial fishing is not actually permitted, frequently affecting the coral habitat because of the use of destructive fishing gear. Also, there exists a high level of uncertainty about the population ecology of the sharks caught and the effects that fishing of these top predators has on the trophic interactions in the ecosystem. Under these circumstances, local fisheries managers face true challenges in order to obtain an adequate management of this expanding fishery

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