Q&A

In conversation with Dean Grubbs

Andros Island: a lifeboat for sawfishes?

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Dean Grubbs holding a juvenile Sawfish in the Everglades while his assistant is taking a blood sample.
Photo by Nadia Bruyndonckx

Dr Dean Grubbs is an Associate Director of Research at the Coastal and Marine Laboratory of the Florida State University (FSU), the current President of the American Elasmobranch Society (AES) and one of the Scientific Advisors of the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF). His personal interests span across a wide range of taxa, and he supervises numerous research and conservation projects throughout the USA.

When you hear phrases like ‘the sixth extinction’ and ‘the Anthropocene epoch’, conservation efforts can seem rather futile. How do you feel about the proliferation of bad news for the environment?

There is no doubt that human overpopulation has taxed ecosystems and natural resources to unprecedented levels and reversing these trends can seem impossible. But among all the bad news there is also good news. Unfortunately, good news for the environment doesn’t get the press coverage that ‘doom and gloom’ gets. This is what has been most frustrating to me. In my field studying elasmobranch ecology and fisheries science, there can be a robust stock assessment that makes use of all appropriate datasets and determines that a stock is stable; it will not get any attention. But if someone cherry-picks a dataset to suggest that the same stock has collapsed and the species is at risk of extinction, that will be picked up by the media and make headlines – and the general public is misled into thinking the latter scenario is true. It is critical that we highlight progress made as well as where there are problems.

What do you think are the dangers of over-emphasising conservation crises by using terms like ‘regional extinction’?

In biology, the word ‘extinction’ is generally used to mean the end of a species. ‘Extirpation’ is the loss of a population or the disappearance of a species from part of its range; some call this a local or regional extinction. I think the term ‘extinction’ should be reserved for cases where the loss of an entire species is genuinely at risk. When we say ‘extinction’, its use should be truly shocking to listeners or readers. In my view, if we use ‘extinction’ to describe the loss of a species from one small part of its range, this cheapens or dampens the severity of the word. It also desensitises the public to the concept of extinction if ecologists and environmentalists are throwing the word about in cases where there is little actual risk of a species going extinct.

Cover image

Dean Grubbs holding a juvenile Sawfish in the Everglades while his assistant is taking a blood sample.
Photo by Nadia Bruyndonckx

Dean Grubbs Project Leader

Philippa Ehrlich Conservation Journalist

What is your outlook on the future for sharks and rays?

For the fate of sharks and rays in general, I tend to be very optimistic. We still have huge problems in some parts of the world where there is a complete lack of management in these species, but there are also really positive signs. In the USA, we saw our populations of large coastal sharks plummet in the late 1980s and early 1990s when commercial fisheries began to target sharks directly. This corresponded with the opening up of US trade with China, including routes for the shark fin trade. But the huge population declines were recognised in the late 1980s and since the early ’90s we have had one of the most aggressively managed shark fisheries in the world. That shark fishery is now managed at a quota that is at about 8% of what the peak landings were. And we have seen recoveries in a lot of our shark populations. Tiger sharks have been increasing for 20 years. Bull sharks are increasing. Blacktip sharks have never been overfished and seem to be stable and sustainably fished. We do still have problems, however. Dusky sharks are still overfished and possibly sandbar sharks too. So there are still issues, but we have seen that we can actually recover these populations when they are overfished.

There has been a lot of interest in sawfishes in recent years. Do you think there is hope for them?

We are seeing a slow increase each year in sawfish populations in Florida. And we are seeing it for both juveniles and adults, so it probably stems from a few things. Not only has the smalltooth sawfish been on the US endangered species list since 2003, but it has been protected in Florida waters, the centre of its distribution, since the early 1990s. So the species has been protected for more than 25 years and we are finally witnessing its recovery. In addition to that, its primary habitat is protected in national parks and wildlife refuges, so we know there are the mechanisms to promote the recovery of this species. For other species in other parts of the world, we’ll see. There are only five species of sawfish worldwide and four of them occur in Australian waters. Australia also has fairly aggressive management plans to try to recover and protect sawfishes. So, between the USA and Australia, the outlook is positive for the preservation of the species. Within individual countries and individual populations, there are mixed results and the outlook may not be quite so optimistic. It’s hard to see progress in some parts of the world where artisanal fisheries use nets to support individual families and villagers who need the protein from fish. So I think there are problems elsewhere.

At Sharks International a couple of years ago, sawfishes were regarded as the ‘pandas of the sea’, which is ironic given that the giant panda is no longer an endangered species. Do you think the same could be in store for sawfishes?

I am very optimistic that we are going to see a recovery in sawfishes. I predict that before I retire, I will be part of the team that says we can now down-list sawfishes in the USA from Endangered to Threatened, at least. Maybe we won’t yet take them off the endangered species list altogether, but that is still our ultimate goal. A lot of people don’t understand that. They think that if something is on the endangered species list, it’s there forever. No, the goal is to recover this population to the point that it is no longer on the endangered list – and I’m optimistic that within the next 20 to 25 years this can be achieved for the US population of the smalltooth sawfish.