The Great Shark Mystery
CBS 2 News Special Assignment
 They're beautiful.
They're powerful.
They're disappearing.
Where are all of California's sharks going?
CBS 2 News' Drew Griffin goes shark fishing to find out.
Special Assignment: The Great Shark Mystery aired Saturday, November 14, 1998 at 11 p.m.
 It's 4 a.m.
The boat christened, The Shark Tagger, races out to sea in search of what most people fear -- sharks!
Aboard The Shark Tagger are fishermen trying to catch as many sharks as they can, but not for what you might think, said CBS 2 News' Drew Griffin.
Keith Poe, Chuck Myers and Jamie Davis are out to catch these "killers" to save them.
"Why are we doing this?" Griffin asked the fishermen.
"We're trying to understand the resource," Poe told Griffin.
Poe believes this "resource" is in trouble because sharks are vanishing.
California's sharks are disappearing at a frightening rate, said Griffin.
That's why it's up to Poe and a small group of volunteers to find out why before the sharks are gone for good, said Griffin.
Griffin joined the crew of Shark Tagger for one of it's daily rescue missions.
 "Yee ha! Hooked, tagged, and soon to be released," Poe said as he caught a blue shark.
"That wasn't too painful then?" Griffin asked.
"Oh, we'll probably catch him four or five more times (today)," Poe said.
As the blue shark slipped back into the dark waters of Santa Monica Bay, Poe wondered where the small plastic tag he put on the shark's dorsal fin would turn up next.
"He'll live with that tag until he's caught again?" Griffin asked.
"Yea, if someone does catch him," replied Poe.
What Poe is actually hoping for is that the right person will catch the blue shark and feed the tag data back to the California Department of Marine Fisheries to help understand how these foreboding animals live, migrate and eventually die.
Little is known about the sharks in California or in the world, except that they are all in trouble, said Griffin.
Last year, an estimated 30-to-100 million sharks were killed.
 Most were caught in the nets of fishermen who are trying to catch something else.
When the sharks are accidentally caught, they are killed and thrown aside.
But accidental death is not the shark's only enemy.
When boiled, the dorsal fin of a shark becomes an Asian delicacy, known as shark-fin soup.
In almost every shop in Los Angeles' Chinatown, there are shark fins in jars or fins packaged from China. Each one represents a shark killed for the fin alone, and they are killed because the fin sells for more than a $100 a pound.
On the decks of some fishing boats, evidence of the slaughter is strung like clothes on a clothes line, said Griffin. "The fin is worth exponentially greater value than the shark meat, the space on the boat is for fins," Marine biologist John Ugortez told Griffin. Ugoretz is with California's Department of Fish and Game, and he knows all about shark finning.
He knows that it has devastated the shark's population on the East Coast. He also knows shark fishing in Asia has depleted the waters there so much that Asian fishermen are now fishing in California.
What he doesn't know is what that is doing to California's shark population.
The shark-tagging study, which he now heads, is relatively new and the Department of Fish Game is apparently unwilling to act unless there is hard scientific evidence the sharks are disappearing.
 "We need a lot of time, maybe 40-50 years, before we can say anything concrete about the sharks we have in California," Ugortez said.
This year, the state did pass a law preventing sharks from being killed for their fin alone, but it only applies to California. The law does not apply to the sharks imported here from somewhere else, said Griffin.
"How do we know the sharks finned in Asia and sent over here isn't the same shark swimming here?" Griffin asked Ugortez.
"Its a good question, that's why the shark-tag program exists." Ugortez replied. One of the sharks tagged off California has been caught off Hawaii.
Out on the Shark Tagger, Poe fears he is already seeing the future of California's sharks because fewer are circling his boat each year. Those that do, are getting smaller and smaller.
Poe worries whether the species will be able to survive the 40 to 50 more years needed for the scientists to collect their data.
"If something is happening to the sharks, will it be too late when we find out?" Griffin asked.
"It's hard to say, I'm a bit of an optimist," Poe said.
Just before dawn, The Shark Tagger crew caught their fifth shark. The nine-foot blue shark spun the boat around twice before he was reeled in. Its razor-sharp teeth snatched the bait as he tried to spin free.
"These guys are a nightmare."
Unchanged through millions of years of evolution, the shark was as dangerous as he is beautiful, said Griffin.
An "apex predator," according to scientists, are crucial to keeping balance in the seas. But the elation of tagging another shark ends when Poe spotted what he calls the "real killer" of the deep.
"I don't think he's dragging, he's travelling," Poe explained to Griffin.
"(That fishing boat) drags that net in a circle, kills everything."
There was almost a silence on board as the commercial boat passed. To Poe and Myers, the future of an entire species could be taken away on board boats just like that fishing boat.
That is why the Shark Tagger boat is in the waters as well.
Just after sun up, the volunteer crew tries to tag and release as many sharks as they can -- before its too late.
According to Griffin, more than 10,000 sharks have been tagged since California's shark tagging program began, but less than 100 have been returned. There is simply not enough information yet to tell scientists what is happening to these awesome creatures, said Griffin.
More information:
Compiled by Channel 2000 Staff
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