As apex predators, sharks play a critical role in maintaining the marine ecosystem and help promote marine diversity however over fishing and illegal fishing, often for their fins, continues to deplete worldwide populations. Their plight is made more challenging as there is often a lack of basic monitoring, control, surveillance and general information to help inform and put in place policies to protect them.
The Pat Smith Database Charity work with recreational sea anglers to promote best practise shark handling and conservation. The recreational sea angling sectors commitment to shark conservation has enabled us to construct the longest timeline of blue shark catch data in the world.
The charity now wishes to extend its work and has set a target to collect a minimum of 250 mucous samples from a number of different shark species to extract their DNA.
Shark DNA can be used to determine relationships through identifying parents, their offspring and the level of mixing between geographically widespread groups. The analysis can also aid our fundamental understanding of how sharks evolved and how differences in DNA sequences contribute to the function, form and ecology of shark species.
Our trustees and volunteers very generously provide their services for free but we need funds to procure equipment, training, transportation and mucous sample storage.
Together with our partners, the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain, Sportfishing Club of the British Isles, Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Shark Hub UK, our objective is to commence the field work late Q1/early Q2 2024 with a potential completion date of the end of 2024.
In line with our policy of education, the samples will be stored in a central repository for further analysis.
Our fundraising target of £9250, covers the cost of training the participating skippers, capital equipment, consumables and sample transport & storage.
Project Budget
Training material £500
Capital Equipment £3500
Consumables £1500
Sample transport & storage £3750