Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogabam. Here we humans in general, not us on
Speaker 1: this podcast, but kill a hundred million sharks every year.
Speaker 1: First starters. Some people eat sharks, so they kill them
Speaker 1: on purpose. For that reason, However, the big shark killing
Speaker 1: culprit is accidental by catch. By catch is the collateral
Speaker 1: damage of the large scale commercial fishing industry. It works
Speaker 1: like this. Say you're in charge of a commercial shrimping boat,
Speaker 1: and it's outfitted with all the gear you need to
Speaker 1: catch shrimp, including a trawling net the size of a
Speaker 1: sports field, which sinks to the seafloor and bumps along
Speaker 1: the bottom, picking up whatever is down there. When it's
Speaker 1: hauled back in. Some of what's in the net is shrimp,
Speaker 1: but it also contains sharks, sea turtles, seals, dolphins, raise
Speaker 1: countless animals of all descriptions. Some of these needlessly die
Speaker 1: before they can be thrown back overboard. Some are hauled
Speaker 1: in to port and their bodies disposed of later. The
Speaker 1: same goes for bated long lines and gill nets, which
Speaker 1: entangle everything that swims into them. The result is that
Speaker 1: as many as two billion pounds that's almost one metric
Speaker 1: ton of marine life is killed and wasted by the
Speaker 1: fishing industry every year, which puts the whole a hundred
Speaker 1: million sharks thing into perspective. But there may be hope,
Speaker 1: at least for the sharks. A cheap, simple fix for
Speaker 1: a big problem like this is rarely forthcoming, but according
Speaker 1: to a study published in a twenty eighteen issue of
Speaker 1: the journal Fisheries Research, the answer to the shark bycatch
Speaker 1: problem might be magnets. Sharks are Alasmo bronx. That is,
Speaker 1: they belong to a group of cartilaginous fishes that also
Speaker 1: includes raisin skates, and they have special sensory organs around
Speaker 1: their nostrils called ampulae of Lorenzini that look like little
Speaker 1: craters all over the sharks snout. Behind these little pores
Speaker 1: are sacks of jelly that can sense electromagnetic fields. They
Speaker 1: help sharks hunt by letting them sense the bioelectricity of
Speaker 1: their praise heartbeat, and scientists think might also help the
Speaker 1: migrate using the Earth's magnetic field. The research team behind
Speaker 1: the aforementioned Setti hypothesized that incorporating magnets into fish traps
Speaker 1: might alert Alasmo bronx to their presence and reduce overall
Speaker 1: sharks by catch. Because bony fishes, which are often what
Speaker 1: fishing outfits are looking to catch, have low sensitivity to
Speaker 1: electromagnetic fields, they figured that even if it worked to
Speaker 1: keep sharks steering clear of the traps, it wouldn't lower
Speaker 1: the catch rates of desirable fish. To test their hypothesis,
Speaker 1: the research team monitored a thousand fish traps off the
Speaker 1: coast of Sydney, New South Wales, all of which were
Speaker 1: baited to catch Australian snapper, a segment of the industry
Speaker 1: that accidentally catches sharks about ten percent of the time.
Speaker 1: One third of the traps were set with cheap magnets
Speaker 1: around the entrances, worth about twenty two American dollars or
Speaker 1: thirty dollars Australian. Another third of the traps were set
Speaker 1: with metal bars at the entrance to provide a physical barrier,
Speaker 1: and the last third were left alone as controls. In
Speaker 1: a press release, co author Rees Richards of the School
Speaker 1: of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle said developing
Speaker 1: ways to reduce by catch as a priority for many fisheries.
Speaker 1: We found the traps with magnets had roughly thirty percent
Speaker 1: less likelihood of catching sharks and rays compared to traps without.
Speaker 1: In addition, those traps with magnets would catch roughly more
Speaker 1: targeted fish, which is a rare win win for fisheries.
Speaker 1: Wind winds are great, but we've got a long way
Speaker 1: to go before we make a dent in that a
Speaker 1: hundred million sharks per year. The magnets seem to work
Speaker 1: well for traps, but magnets won't work on long lines.
Speaker 1: The lines are fitted with metal hooks, so magnets would
Speaker 1: tangle the gear. More research is needed, but as fans
Speaker 1: of these fascinating finned creatures were glad to see one
Speaker 1: possible solution. Today's episode was written by Jesslin Shields and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other not so fishy topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com