Shark Killer David Shiffman
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Playing Games with Mega Death
While David Shiffman always has a lot to say, an overview of his writings reveals that he is looking for attention, bragging about being a “scientist,” and insulting conservationists, whom he subtly belittles, while promoting shark fishing.
Shiffman presents himself as an authority with important information on conservation for the enlightenment of others, but he is not a conservationist. His writings promote the killing of sharks. During the past two years he has done all he could to block the the elimination of the shark fin trade in the USA, even advertising the idea that the shark fin trade is “good for sharks.”
What other scientist calls openly and repeatedly for the painful deaths of the animal he or she studies? Anyone bragging about studying dogs who advocated killing them for money would be considered a psychopathic idiot. Shiffman will advise, if you criticize his crazy views, that he “has a PhD” and I guess you have to have a PhD in shark fishing to think that the shark fin trade is good for sharks! If you have ever read a serious scientific publication you will realize that Shiffman's PhD is the sort that you get out of a box of Rice Krispies.
Try to find real science in Shiffman's articles and you will come up empty handed. Ironically he calls one of his columns, “Science Stop” which is funny because when he starts writing, science stops.
The short and vacuous paper Shiffman wrote to block The Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act (with Robert Hueter, another shark fishing advocate looking for ways of taking advantage of the high value of shark fins), gave only three reasons for promoting the shark fin trade, all of which concerned the welfare of shark fishermen, not sharks. American fishermen should be able to go on making good money, Shiffman and Hueter declared, even though they have fished out everything else. Why should they work on building up the fish stocks they have overfished, when they can kill sharks instead?
It turns out that American shark fisheries depend on the shark fin trade to make money, and instead of rebuilding the fish stocks fishermen have devastated, and bringing coastal habitats back to health as they should, they have turned to slaughtering the top predators to replace cod and the other lost fish species.
Now Shiffman is promoting “sustainable shark fishing” but the idea is nothing but a fisherman’s farce. Sharks have become so valuable, due to the demand for their fins, that intensive shark fishing spans all oceans. No record is kept of most shark kills, so the idea that the entire shark fin trade is going to be made sustainable under the guidance of the USA is ridiculous. There should be a worldwide authority to enforce sustainable shark fishing on the high seas, away from national regulations, but there is not, and that is where the farce lies. Further, the American public have not been asked if they want to fund this global effort with their tax dollars, either.
If history has taught us anything, it is that no species can stand up to sustained, targeted, commercial hunting—not whales, not turtles, not fish, and not sharks. The only way to get rid of the shark fin trade, and its effect on shark populations globally, is to stamp it out wherever it rears its ugly head. Then eventually, the fins will have no special value and the shark massacre will end.
One of the fisheries Shiffman has used as proof that many sustainable shark fisheries exist around the world, has just been proven to be another fisherman’s pipe dream: the shortfin mako fishery of the North Atlantic. Fisheries' management in the USA claims to be the best in the world, but it allowed this species to go from ‘Lower Risk’ to ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Endangered’ in less than 20 years with no conservation action. Then, at the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the USA and the European Union blocked the mako protections that were proposed by other countries.
This demonstrates the hollowness of American claims, which Shiffman has exaggerated in his promotional writings. Typically, he is now pretending to be an authority on the subject by writing about this fishery, without mentioning that he was arguing that it was a sustainable shark fishery during the past two years, and that he has been using it as a reason to try to block The Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act in the USA.
Shiffman has published a series of papers to give the scientific ring of authority to shark fishing and the fin trade. In an article in the journal “Fisheries” in 2014 he promoted recreational shark fishing in Florida as a way for the state to make money, based on the idea that shark diving is lucrative. This paper showed that Shiffman had no idea what evidence actually is, and was clueless, too, about mathematics.
If you try to profit from fighting birds or dogs in the state of Florida, you are guilty of a felony. Now that it has been established that fish suffer equally, there is no difference in terms of animal suffering among these blood sports, yet to Shiffman, fishing sharks for fun and profit (in their millions) was a good idea!
For one shark to earn two million dollars for Florida as he suggested it could, it would have to be fished 4000 times. The possible effects on the lives and biology of the sharks living there as a result of being repeatedly “fought” nearly to death at this intensity, was not a subject that concerned Shiffman. When questioned about it, he could not produce any argument to back up his position.
The evidence of the success of diving enterprises in the shark sanctuary of French Polynesia points, instead, to the conclusion that shark diving should replace shark fishing in Florida, and that the beleaguered animals should be left in peace.
One of the most famous American shark-fishing charter boat captains, Frank Mundus, was quoted by Russell Drumm in his book “In the Slick of the Cricket” as stating:
“Feeling good about tagging and releasing sharks was folly. The cheaper hooks bought by the weekend warriors were more often than not swallowed by the sharks, which then fought their final battle gut-hooked. After being released, most sank to the bottom, dead. Maybe two out of twelve are hooked in the mouth. Add it up along the coast.”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce (NOAA), two million, seven hundred thousand sharks were caught by sports fishermen in the U.S.A. in 2011. Since those were the killings that were reported, only, this figure could be low compared with the true numbers killed if the toll from private boats, that were not reported, were added in.
Shiffman has written other similarly flawed fisheries papers. One tried to put forth evidence that most shark researchers are in favour of fishing sharks sustainably, when the actual results of the survey he reported did not suggest this conclusion. Subsequently he cited it, misrepresenting what it actually showed, as a reason to oppose bans on the shark fin trade.
Another paper criticized conservationists, while a recent one advises fishermen on how to use the social media to promote their ideas. Shiffman is not a shark scientist—he has not published one paper revealing something new about sharks.
Shiffman has admitted to being financed by everything from Sharknado2 to a variety of fishing interests. It is now a matter of record that industry will deliberately support a political platform for favoured, and often paid researchers, to influence public opinion. This was done, for example, by the tobacco industry and the oil industry.
Paying for ‘science’ provides the fishing industry with a way to launder biased, non-scientific ideas into a form that will have the same credibility as pure research, just as criminals launder money. The practice is used openly by the fishing industry, which is a multi-billion dollar power that has taken control of wild fish and sharks and how these animals are viewed by the public. Irregardless of available facts, the conclusions of the fishing industry are always in favour of fishermen, and not fish.
Another example is the idea that fish don’t feel pain, which only fishermen promote, yet they have managed to muddy the waters enough to prevent fish (and sharks) from receiving the protections given to mammals, birds, and reptiles.
Shiffman’s statements in his papers repeat almost word for word the propaganda produced by the Sustainable Shark Alliance (SSA), which represents shark fishermen, dealers, and processors. They both promote H.R. 788, The Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act of 2019, and actually admit that without the profit from shark fins, shark fisheries in the USA will be shut down.
However the numbers reveal that the large market for shark fins in the USA could never be filled by fins from sustainable shark fisheries, for only a few of them temporarily exist.
In the USA and elsewhere too, students of shark science are encouraged to work with fishermen. This allows them access to shark cadavers to dissect, and provides the possibility of finding some new anatomical detail. Their camaraderie with fishermen brings access to fishing boats for tagging sharks, and if a tag is returned from a distant place, it will bring them instant recognition, though they have done nothing but put a tag on a shark. Piggybacking on shark fishing can, at any moment, provide some obscure detail on which to publish a paper for the enhancement of their résumés.
By the time these students graduate, the years of focusing on dead sharks have effectively brainwashed them in their approach to the animals. Approaching sharks through fishing and fisheries denies any appreciation of the true nature of these intelligent animals pursuing complex lives in their natural environment.
A World Bank study, Sunken Billions, 2009, and Sunken Billions Revisited, 2017, has found that unsustainable Fisheries management practices have led to globally depleted fish stocks that produce $83 billion less in annual net benefits than would otherwise be the case. Ninety percent of fisheries are over-exploited.
To address this global crisis, the main requirement is that fishing effort must be diminished, while at the same time, fish stocks must be rebuilt, and coastal ecosystems returned to a state of health.
Sunken Billions predicts that social unrest will result from the necessary reduction of fishing effort that must come, because some fishermen will have to turn to other occupations. So the current demands of shark fishermen to continue to profit from the shark fin trade have been predicted, and are understandable, but are scientifically indefensible.
The World Bank recommends that the fishing subsidies that have facilitated over-fishing in the past, be used to ease this social transition.
It is important to make the distinction between those who are trying to actually protect sharks from the global slaughter currently underway, and those who are deliberately muddying the waters in order to promote a twisted program of shark killing. Sharks need protection, seriously!
(c) Ila France PorcherTo subscribe to my newsletter, click HERE
Shiffman presents himself as an authority with important information on conservation for the enlightenment of others, but he is not a conservationist. His writings promote the killing of sharks. During the past two years he has done all he could to block the the elimination of the shark fin trade in the USA, even advertising the idea that the shark fin trade is “good for sharks.”
What other scientist calls openly and repeatedly for the painful deaths of the animal he or she studies? Anyone bragging about studying dogs who advocated killing them for money would be considered a psychopathic idiot. Shiffman will advise, if you criticize his crazy views, that he “has a PhD” and I guess you have to have a PhD in shark fishing to think that the shark fin trade is good for sharks! If you have ever read a serious scientific publication you will realize that Shiffman's PhD is the sort that you get out of a box of Rice Krispies.
Try to find real science in Shiffman's articles and you will come up empty handed. Ironically he calls one of his columns, “Science Stop” which is funny because when he starts writing, science stops.
The short and vacuous paper Shiffman wrote to block The Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act (with Robert Hueter, another shark fishing advocate looking for ways of taking advantage of the high value of shark fins), gave only three reasons for promoting the shark fin trade, all of which concerned the welfare of shark fishermen, not sharks. American fishermen should be able to go on making good money, Shiffman and Hueter declared, even though they have fished out everything else. Why should they work on building up the fish stocks they have overfished, when they can kill sharks instead?
It turns out that American shark fisheries depend on the shark fin trade to make money, and instead of rebuilding the fish stocks fishermen have devastated, and bringing coastal habitats back to health as they should, they have turned to slaughtering the top predators to replace cod and the other lost fish species.
Now Shiffman is promoting “sustainable shark fishing” but the idea is nothing but a fisherman’s farce. Sharks have become so valuable, due to the demand for their fins, that intensive shark fishing spans all oceans. No record is kept of most shark kills, so the idea that the entire shark fin trade is going to be made sustainable under the guidance of the USA is ridiculous. There should be a worldwide authority to enforce sustainable shark fishing on the high seas, away from national regulations, but there is not, and that is where the farce lies. Further, the American public have not been asked if they want to fund this global effort with their tax dollars, either.
If history has taught us anything, it is that no species can stand up to sustained, targeted, commercial hunting—not whales, not turtles, not fish, and not sharks. The only way to get rid of the shark fin trade, and its effect on shark populations globally, is to stamp it out wherever it rears its ugly head. Then eventually, the fins will have no special value and the shark massacre will end.
One of the fisheries Shiffman has used as proof that many sustainable shark fisheries exist around the world, has just been proven to be another fisherman’s pipe dream: the shortfin mako fishery of the North Atlantic. Fisheries' management in the USA claims to be the best in the world, but it allowed this species to go from ‘Lower Risk’ to ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Endangered’ in less than 20 years with no conservation action. Then, at the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the USA and the European Union blocked the mako protections that were proposed by other countries.
This demonstrates the hollowness of American claims, which Shiffman has exaggerated in his promotional writings. Typically, he is now pretending to be an authority on the subject by writing about this fishery, without mentioning that he was arguing that it was a sustainable shark fishery during the past two years, and that he has been using it as a reason to try to block The Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act in the USA.
Shiffman has published a series of papers to give the scientific ring of authority to shark fishing and the fin trade. In an article in the journal “Fisheries” in 2014 he promoted recreational shark fishing in Florida as a way for the state to make money, based on the idea that shark diving is lucrative. This paper showed that Shiffman had no idea what evidence actually is, and was clueless, too, about mathematics.
If you try to profit from fighting birds or dogs in the state of Florida, you are guilty of a felony. Now that it has been established that fish suffer equally, there is no difference in terms of animal suffering among these blood sports, yet to Shiffman, fishing sharks for fun and profit (in their millions) was a good idea!
For one shark to earn two million dollars for Florida as he suggested it could, it would have to be fished 4000 times. The possible effects on the lives and biology of the sharks living there as a result of being repeatedly “fought” nearly to death at this intensity, was not a subject that concerned Shiffman. When questioned about it, he could not produce any argument to back up his position.
The evidence of the success of diving enterprises in the shark sanctuary of French Polynesia points, instead, to the conclusion that shark diving should replace shark fishing in Florida, and that the beleaguered animals should be left in peace.
One of the most famous American shark-fishing charter boat captains, Frank Mundus, was quoted by Russell Drumm in his book “In the Slick of the Cricket” as stating:
“Feeling good about tagging and releasing sharks was folly. The cheaper hooks bought by the weekend warriors were more often than not swallowed by the sharks, which then fought their final battle gut-hooked. After being released, most sank to the bottom, dead. Maybe two out of twelve are hooked in the mouth. Add it up along the coast.”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce (NOAA), two million, seven hundred thousand sharks were caught by sports fishermen in the U.S.A. in 2011. Since those were the killings that were reported, only, this figure could be low compared with the true numbers killed if the toll from private boats, that were not reported, were added in.
Shiffman has written other similarly flawed fisheries papers. One tried to put forth evidence that most shark researchers are in favour of fishing sharks sustainably, when the actual results of the survey he reported did not suggest this conclusion. Subsequently he cited it, misrepresenting what it actually showed, as a reason to oppose bans on the shark fin trade.
Another paper criticized conservationists, while a recent one advises fishermen on how to use the social media to promote their ideas. Shiffman is not a shark scientist—he has not published one paper revealing something new about sharks.
Shiffman has admitted to being financed by everything from Sharknado2 to a variety of fishing interests. It is now a matter of record that industry will deliberately support a political platform for favoured, and often paid researchers, to influence public opinion. This was done, for example, by the tobacco industry and the oil industry.
Paying for ‘science’ provides the fishing industry with a way to launder biased, non-scientific ideas into a form that will have the same credibility as pure research, just as criminals launder money. The practice is used openly by the fishing industry, which is a multi-billion dollar power that has taken control of wild fish and sharks and how these animals are viewed by the public. Irregardless of available facts, the conclusions of the fishing industry are always in favour of fishermen, and not fish.
Another example is the idea that fish don’t feel pain, which only fishermen promote, yet they have managed to muddy the waters enough to prevent fish (and sharks) from receiving the protections given to mammals, birds, and reptiles.
Shiffman’s statements in his papers repeat almost word for word the propaganda produced by the Sustainable Shark Alliance (SSA), which represents shark fishermen, dealers, and processors. They both promote H.R. 788, The Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act of 2019, and actually admit that without the profit from shark fins, shark fisheries in the USA will be shut down.
However the numbers reveal that the large market for shark fins in the USA could never be filled by fins from sustainable shark fisheries, for only a few of them temporarily exist.
In the USA and elsewhere too, students of shark science are encouraged to work with fishermen. This allows them access to shark cadavers to dissect, and provides the possibility of finding some new anatomical detail. Their camaraderie with fishermen brings access to fishing boats for tagging sharks, and if a tag is returned from a distant place, it will bring them instant recognition, though they have done nothing but put a tag on a shark. Piggybacking on shark fishing can, at any moment, provide some obscure detail on which to publish a paper for the enhancement of their résumés.
By the time these students graduate, the years of focusing on dead sharks have effectively brainwashed them in their approach to the animals. Approaching sharks through fishing and fisheries denies any appreciation of the true nature of these intelligent animals pursuing complex lives in their natural environment.
A World Bank study, Sunken Billions, 2009, and Sunken Billions Revisited, 2017, has found that unsustainable Fisheries management practices have led to globally depleted fish stocks that produce $83 billion less in annual net benefits than would otherwise be the case. Ninety percent of fisheries are over-exploited.
To address this global crisis, the main requirement is that fishing effort must be diminished, while at the same time, fish stocks must be rebuilt, and coastal ecosystems returned to a state of health.
Sunken Billions predicts that social unrest will result from the necessary reduction of fishing effort that must come, because some fishermen will have to turn to other occupations. So the current demands of shark fishermen to continue to profit from the shark fin trade have been predicted, and are understandable, but are scientifically indefensible.
The World Bank recommends that the fishing subsidies that have facilitated over-fishing in the past, be used to ease this social transition.
It is important to make the distinction between those who are trying to actually protect sharks from the global slaughter currently underway, and those who are deliberately muddying the waters in order to promote a twisted program of shark killing. Sharks need protection, seriously!
(c) Ila France PorcherTo subscribe to my newsletter, click HERE
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