Blacknose Shark - Human Interactions

Human Interactions

The blacknose shark has never been implicated in an attack on humans. However, caution should be exercised if it begins to perform a threat display. This species is regarded as a game fish and offers a respectable fight on light tackle (a more delicate fishing line). It is also of regional commercial importance, being taken intentionally and as bycatch via gillnets and surface longlines across its range, most significantly off southwestern Florida, Venezuela, and Brazil; the meat is sold dried and salted. Large numbers of blacknose sharks are also caught incidentally by shrimp trawlers, which may pose a greater threat to its population, as many of the sharks taken are immature.

Off the United States, the fishing of the blacknose shark is regulated by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service 1993 Fisheries Management Plan (FMP) for Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico sharks. For the purposes of commercial quotas and bag limits, the blacknose shark is classified within the "small coastal shark" (SCS) complex. From 1999 to 2005, an average of 27,484 blacknose sharks (62 metric tons) were caught each year off the United States. Recent stock assessments conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have determined the populations of this species have become overfished in both the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. In 2009, the NOAA proposed instituting a separate quota for blacknose sharks of 6,065 sharks per year, and a ban on using gillnets to catch sharks in the Atlantic. By contrast, blacknose shark stocks off northern Brazil appear to be stable, while no fishery data are available from the Caribbean. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed this species as Near Threatened globally.