As many as 150,000 sharks are captured per year 2 . Blue shark are incidental by-catch and are often discarded after removal of their fins to satisfy increasing demand primarily from the Asian market. As a result, blue shark by-catch and finning practices have emerged as important fisheries management issues.
Blue sharks are also probably the widest ranging shark species.
They appear to make extensive and complex migrations, but movement patterns across seasons are not well documented. Because blue sharks are both ubiquitous and highly vagile, effective resource management, equitable resource allocations, and the population assessments upon which these are based, depend on a thorough understanding of long term horizontal movement patterns. Although all three methods can be effective, all have limitations in the quality of data that can be obtained. Researchers anticipate the majority of sharks to be tagged on dedicated longline cruises aboard the NMFS research vessel Townsend Cromwell and while onboard commercial longline vessels. Researchers will attach hook timers to longline droppers to record the duration of hooking prior to subsequent release.