Living alongside the sharks of Ascension Island
Ascension Island is home to one of the world’s largest marine protected areas and all species of sharks have been legally protected in the island’s waters since 2015. Recently, more frequent encounters with sharks (primarily Galápagos and silky sharks) in shallow coastal waters have created conflict with human ocean users such as fishers and divers. Sam wants to help understand what is driving these inshore shark movements so as to improve the ability to predict, explain and respond to future human–shark interactions. He’s drawing on the IUCN’s best-practice guidelines on human–wildlife conflict to work with local stakeholders and promote co-existence.
Sam Weber
I am a British marine biologist who grew up near Liverpool in the north-west of the UK. I initially studied molecular biology at the University of Sheffield, having been advised that it would set me up for a lucrative career in ‘big pharma’. However, after a year out travelling and diving through South-East Asia and Australia, I decided that my true passion lay in the natural world and in oceans. Like many people of my generation, I grew up inspired by Sir David Attenborough, and experiencing the incredible natural places I had previously only seen on television was...
Human-shark conflict and coexistence at Ascension Island
This project aims to understand the drivers and impacts of changing shark distributions and interactions with humans in the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area.
Encounters between humans and sharks are increasing in some areas of the world and can create conflicts that undermine conservation goals. However, the biological drivers and societal impacts of such interactions are often poorly understood. This project will study the movements of sharks in the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area and work with local stakeholders to investigate the causes and impacts of recent increases in inshore shark activity, with a view to promoting co-existence.
Top predators are essential for healthy ecosystems, but living alongside them can present significant challenges for human populations, particularly those inhabiting wild, pristine or highly protected environments where large predators are still abundant. For coastal communities, interactions with sharks can incite particularly strong reactions and create conflicts that undermine conservation goals. Sharks can pose a threat to human safety and impact livelihoods and well-being from catch depredation in recreational and commercial fisheries. Experience from terrestrial systems suggests that effectively managing such conflicts requires an understanding of both the biological drivers (why predators move and behave as they do) and the social context of wildlife interactions (how they affect people and their perceptions and relations with each other). However, these principles have not yet been widely applied to human–shark interactions.
In this project, we aim to apply best practice in wildlife conflict management to address an emerging human–shark conflict at the UK Overseas Territory of Ascension Island. The island is home to one of the world’s largest marine protected areas and all shark species have been legally protected in its waters since 2015. Recently, however, more frequent encounters with sharks (primarily Galápagos and silky sharks) in shallow coastal waters have created conflicts with human ocean users, such as fishers and divers, and resulted in two serious attacks. At present, the drivers of these inshore movements are not understood, which fuels speculation and limits our ability to predict, explain or respond to future events.
The project has three main objectives, which broadly align with the IUCN’s best-practice guidelines on human–wildlife conflict:
- To investigate the factors that affect shark distributions and the potential for negative interactions with humans in the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area. This will be achieved by tracking the movements of Galápagos sharks over multiple years using a passive acoustic tracking array and relating distributions to environmental variables.
- To work with the local community to gather consistent, long-term data on the frequency, nature and impact of human–shark interactions at Ascension Island, as well as local ecological knowledge.
- To promote human–shark co-existence by working with stakeholders to design research, management and communication strategies, drawing on the results of the first two objectives.