The world record for a shark being landed by a fishing rod, has just been broken by two Danish fisherman. Per Jensen and Henrik Hansen successfully landed themselves an 880 kilo, 4 meter and 10 cm Eqalussuaq (also known as a Greenland Shark, or Somniosus microcephalus) in Norway’s Bokna Fjord. The Bokna Ford is in Rogaland County, between Stavanger and Haugesund.

The previous record for such a rod caught shark was said to be in the neighborhood of 775 kilos.

When asked about the adventure, and overall catch, Henrik Jensen responded, “It all went very well”.

The two Danish fisherman had made their way to the Bokna Ford, as they had recently heard that rather big Greenland sharks were prowling the waters. As to the bait? They simply used an empty potato sack full of plaice.

The Greenland shark is not generally considered edible as its flesh is toxic and contains timethylene oxide, which when ingested causes the same symptoms as being drunk as a skunk.

It is interesting to note that if the Greenland shark is prepared in a rather difficult process, it can be eaten, and is even considered a delicacy in Iceland (even more so in Greenland) where the fish, which is not normally a danger to humans in general, is closely tied into the Inuit folklore.

Thousands of Greenland sharks get caught and die in nest off Greenland each year, but their meat is toxic to humans and the carcasses are therefore thrown back into the sea.

Researchers at the Arctic Technology Centre (ARTEK) in Sisimiut in western Greenland now hope to find a way of turning the oily flesh of these enormous fishes into biogas for Eskimos.

The Greenland shark can reach a length of seven meters (23 feet) and weigh up to a tonne.

“I think this is an alternative where we can use the thousands of tonnes of leftovers of products from the sea,

including those of the numerous sharks,” says Marianne Willemoes Joergensen of ARTEK’s branch at the Technical University of Denmark.

Joergensen, who is in charge of a pilot project based in the Uummannaq village in northwestern Greenland, says a mixture of shark meat, macro-algae and household wastewater could serve as biomass for biofuel production.

“Biofuel is the best solution for this kind of organic waste, which can be used to produce electricity and heating with a carbon neutral method,” she explains.

According to estimates, biofuel from the sea could supply Uummannaq’s 2,450 inhabitants with 13 percent of their energy consumption.

But the biofuel project is not uncontroversial.

“[It] is not a good idea, not at all“, says Danish WWF ocean mammal specialist Anne-Marie Bjerg who wants to see other sustainable energy projects undertaken instead.

“We know very little about the Greenland shark, which lives in a limited geographic zone, the Arctic,” she said. “We are opposed to the commercial use of marine mammals*, such as the Greenland shark, which is not universal and whose population size is unknown.“

AC Comment:

*The Greenland shark is not a mammal since it does not feed its young milk. Mammals are animals whose females are characterized by the possession of mammary glands. The Greenland shark does however give birth to live young. Just like many other sharks, it is an ovoviviparous species. Much remains unknown of the Greenland shark’s reproduction and life cycle.

According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), Greenland intends to ask permission to hunt a quota of 50 humpbacks over five years. The request will be put forward at an international key meeting on Tuesday where the 40 year long moratorium on whaling will be discussed.

“The WDCS urges member states and the Czech presidency [of the European Union] not to put at risk the EU’s reputation for commitment to the conservation of the world’s whales,” WDCS spokesman Nicolas Entrup said in Lisbon, Portugal.

On Tuesday, the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will commence on Madeira, a Portuguese island.

Humpback whale
The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is a baleen whale found in all the major oceans (not including the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea) in a wide band running from the Antarctic ice edge to 65° N latitude. It is known for its knobbly head and its habit of frequently breaching and slapping the water; a practise which has made it especially popular among whale watchers. The purpose of the famous humpback whale song produced by the males remains unclear, but it is believed to play a role in reproduction. This whale song lasts for 10-20 minutes and is repeated for hours at a time.

The introduction of the explosive harpoon in the late 1800s and increasingly better ships made it possible for whalers to drastically accelerate their take, which soon led to a sharp decline in most whale populations, including the humpback whale. An estimated number of 200,000 humpbacks where taken during the 20th century, reducing the global population by over 90% and bringing the North Atlantic population down to a mere 700 individuals. When the ban on commercial humpback whaling was introduced by the IWC in 1966, the global population consisted of an estimated 5000 whales.

Today, the Humpback has made a promising comeback. In 2008, it was moved from the “Vulnerable” section on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and has since then been listed as “Least Concern”, although two subpopulations remain endangered.

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), over 50,000 humpbacks can be found in the Southern Hemisphere, while the North Pacific Ocean is home to 18,000-20,000 individuals and the North Atlantic population comprises about 12,000 specimens.

The main threats to the humpback whales are today entanglement in fishing equipment, ship collisions, and noise pollution.

Thanks to a system of underwater hydrophones, scientists have been able to document the presence of North Atlantic Right whales in an area where they were believed to have gone extinct.

The North Atlantic Right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), where even the name is a reference to it being the “right” whale to hunt, was heavily targeted by whalers during the 19^th and 20^th century and the entire species was on the brink of extinction when the moratorium on whaling was implemented in the 1960s.

Being an important whaling area throughout the 19^th century, Cape Farewell Ground off the southern tip of Greenland was believed to have no surviving population of Right whales, but when scientists from Oregon State University (OSU) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) begun investigating the area using hydrophones, they recorded a total of 2,012 Right whale “calls” from July through December 2007.

“We don’t know how many right whales there were in the area,” says David Mellinger, assistant professor at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and chief scientist of the project. “They aren’t individually distinctive in their vocalizations. But we did hear right whales at three widely space sites on the same day, so the absolute minimum is three. Even that number is significant because the entire population is estimated to be only 300 to 400 whales.”

During the last 50 years no more than two Right whales have been sighted at Cape Farewell Ground, so even a figure as low as three during the same day is good news.

The project has been using five hydrophones engineered by Haru Matsumoto at OSU, configured to continuously record ambient sounds below 1,000 Hz over a large region of the North Atlantic. These underwater hydrophones are sensitive enough to record sounds from hundreds of miles away. The scientists used previous recordings of Atlantic and North Pacific Right whales to identify the species’ distinct sounds, including a type of vocalization known as “up” calls.

“The technology has enabled us to identify an important unstudied habitat for endangered right whales and raises the possibility that – contrary to general belief – a remnant of a central or eastern Atlantic stock of right whales still exists and might be viable,” says Mellinger.

Results of the 2007 study were presented this week at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

In addition to Mellinger and Clapham, scientists involved in the project include Sharon Nieukirk, Karolin Klinck, Holger Klinck and Bob Dziak of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies – a joint venture between OSU and NOAA; Phillip Clapham, a right whale expert with NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Laboratory, and Bryndís Brandsdóttir of the University of Iceland.

As reported earlier , the European Union has decided to ban the import of seal skin and other seal products hailing from commercial seal hunting.

This has upset Canadian seal hunters since Italy and Denmark, both members of the European Union, are two major importers of seal products. Italy imports most of their seal skins from Russia, but Denmark has always been an important trade partner for North American seal hunters, partly due to Denmark’s traditional connection to Greenland.

According to a statement from Canadian Trade Minister Stockwell Day, the federal government is now getting ready to move in with an appeal against the ban, which they see as a clear breach of WTO regulation.

“We’ll go to the WTO because it’s clear in WTO regulations that if one country wants to ban the products of another, it has to have clear scientific, medically acceptable reasons for doing so, and this EU ban is not based on hard science,” Day said.

The Canadin government believes that Canada deserves an exemption from the import ban since it follows internationally accepted guidelines regarding seal hunting, e.g. by prohibiting the clubbing of baby seals while they still have their white coats.

Day claims that the European ban is based on “people’s feelings” rather than hard facts, and says that the trade action will proceed unless the European Union Parliament exempts Canada and other countries that he said practise humane and sustainable seal hunting. According to Day, seal hunt proponents erroneously portray seal hunting as it was 40 years ago.

The suggested seal import ban must still be approved by individual European governments before becoming law but can, if passed, come into effect as early as next year. If the is approved, it will cause an annual 2 million USD loss for the Canadian industry.

Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea agrees supports the government’s planned trade action.

“When you live in small coastal communities, sometimes there’s not many opportunities to make some additional money,” she said. “We have a number of families who make up to 35% of their annual income from the seal hunt. So yes, I do think it’s very important.”

As reported earlier, the proposed European seal import ban will contain some exemptions and seal products resulting from hunts traditionally conducted by Inuit and other indigenous communities can still be imported to and marketed in European Union countries even if the ban is approved. Products that result from hunting conducted for the purpose of sustainable management of marine resources on a non-profit basis will also be allowed, and individual travellers will be permitted to bring seal products to the European Union as long as the import is of an occasional nature and consists exclusively of goods for the personal use of the traveller.

Is the scary looking Atlantic Wolffish, Anarhichas lupus, on the brink of extinction? Today, The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and others filed a scientific petition with the federal government of the United States, seeking endangered species protection for this intimidating eel-like creature. If the petition is successful, the Atlantic Wolffish will be the first marine fish to receive endangered species protection in New England.

The Atlantic Wolffish, also known as the Seawolf, is primarily found in cold parts of the Atlantic, but can also be encountered in warmer locations, such as the north-western Mediterranean Sea and the Bay of Biscay. Along the North American coast, it is found as north as the Davis Strait between mid-western Greenland and Baffin Island, and as far south as New Jersey. It is however uncommon south of Cape Cod, New England. In order to survive the cold temperature of its northern habitat, the Atlantic Wolffish has developed a natural anti-freeze that prevents its body from freezing.

The CLF petition cites federal and independent scientific studies that show a dramatic decline of Atlantic Wolffish during the past two decades. According to federal statistics, commercial fishermen are now landing 95% less Atlantic Wolffish than in 1983. Back in the early 1980s, commercial fishermen landed about 1,200 metric tones of this fish per annum, which can be compared to the mere 64.7 metric tons of Atlantic Wolffish landed last year. The Atlantic Wolffish has also worried the scientific community by virtually disappearing from the scientific research trawls carried out twice a year off the coast of New England.

”Based on all available science, Atlantic wolffish are rapidly headed toward extinction in New England’s ocean waters,” said Peter Shelley , CLF Vice President and Senior Attorney. “The dramatic decline in wolffish is a troubling indication that while there is some good news about marine species like haddock and sea scallops that have been successfully restored, our ocean’s long term health continues to hang for other species by a precarious balance. Key species like the wolffish and endangered whales remain in serious jeopardy.”

The main threats against the Atlantic Wolffish are commercial fishing (including by-catch) and habitat degradation, with a major part of the habitat degradation being the result of commercial fishing since it is carried out using trawls and dredges. “Absent some action to reduce or eliminate the destruction of seafloor habitat in the few remaining areas of United States waters that harbor remnant populations of the Atlantic wolffish, it is probable that it will be faced with extinction in those waters in the near future,” says marine scientist and co-petitioner Dr Les Watling.

The Atlantic Wolffish is listed as a Species of Concern by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).