Have you ever heard of Isla de Vieques? For sixty years, the majority of this island-municipality of Puerto Rico was closed off by the US Navy. Hence, very little is known about the flora and fauna of this island in the northeastern Caribbean. Now that most parts of the island are (at least in principle) open and accessible, this will hopefully change. At least when it comes to sharks!

As you know, the Bull Shark Tagging Programme started in the Bahamas back in 2003 and then moved on to the Shark Reef Marine Reserve in Fiji. We might go back to the Bahamas to tag more bull sharks there at some future point in time (which would make a lot of sense, e.g. see Tobey Curtis’ latest paper Seasonal distribution and habitat associations of bull sharks in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida: A 30-year synthesis), but for the moment we took the chance to look out for bull sharks in the waters around Vieques. Vieques offers huge potential. Almost no information about sharks in Viques is available in the scientific literature which is not surprising given the fact that much of the island’s waters were closed for fishing and diving. There are many mangrove fringed bays that offer potential nursery habitat. If these shallow bays can be identified as important habitats for sharks (and many other marine animals of course!), conservation measures can be proposed and hopefully implemented with the support of the local communities, maybe similar to what we have been doing in Fiji.

With the support of the Save Our Seas Foundation, we conducted a first shark survey in May this year. The aim was to learn what species of sharks we catch and where in the different bays. Or in other words collect some baseline data that would give us an idea of where to dig deeper in the future. Mainly for logistical reasons we focused our efforts on Ensenada Honda, a quite large and shallow bay on the southeastern side of Vieques. If sharks were caught, the bay could be equipped with acoustic listening stations and tagged sharks monitored how they use the bay, move in and out etc. 

Harry who is leading the field work in Vieques so far did a total of 14 gillnet fishing surveys in different bays. He caught young-of-the-year and juveniles of a total of four species: blacktip (C. limbatus), lemon, bonnethead and nurse sharks. But no bull sharks yet. Reports from local fishermen indicate that there must be other species around and also large sharks in the deeper waters around the island. Certainly tiger sharks, but I’m confident that we’ll eventually also find bull sharks. Harry is preparing a next trip to Vieques end of this month to do some more fishing and I will report results here in November.