Federal researchers announced this week that the number of sharks swimming along the East Coast is at record high with the marine animal's population found to be significantly higher than when scientists started counting them in 1986.
Lisa Natanson, from the NOAA Fisheries' Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), said that the new survey of sharks shows that the rules to protect the animals from fishing off the East Coast have helped the animals recover.
The population of sharks started to decline from the late 1970's to the early 1990's with the surge in the popularity of their meat. The animals are vulnerable to overfishing because they grow slowly and only reproduce once or only a few times throughout their lives.
NOAA's announcement on the record high number of sharks comes in the wake of shark attacks that occurred in North Carolina earlier this year. Eight people were attacked by these sea predators, the most number of attacks in a year since the Florida Museum of Natural History started to track shark incidents eight decades ago.
Experts said that while there is always the risk of attack, beachgoers should not assume that there will be an increase in the number of shark attacks because the population of sharks has increased.
NOAA researchers captured and tagged 2,835 sharks in waters from North Carolina to Florida this year, an increase from 1,831 three years earlier when the last survey was completed.
Scientists have been conducting the research for almost 30 years and the survey is done every two to three years. This year, scientists caught 13 different species and recorded their sex, age, length and location.
The longest shark captured was a 12.5 foot long tiger shark. The most common species that the researchers have encountered were the sandbar and dusky sharks, which were greatly depleted because of commercial and recreational fishing, as well as the Atlantic sharpnose and tiger sharks.
"Sandbar sharks were all along the coast, while most of the dusky sharks were off North Carolina," Natanson said. "We captured a bull shark for the first time since 2001, and recaptured 10 sharks previously tagged by our program and two sharks tagged by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science."
Gregory Skomal, a shark expert with the Massachusetts's Department of Fish and Game Division of Marine Fisheries said that while the overall number of sharks has improved, a number of shark species are not close to full recovery.
"Although this is a positive sign, we're still not where we need to be for a number of these species," Skomal said.
Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters | Flickr
