DTA Files Lawsuit Against National Marine Fisheries Service to Protect Tope Shark
Tope shark by George Brown Good from Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States: Section I, Natural History of Useful Aquatic Animals, Plates. No credit required; acknowledgement of the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank as a source for borrowed images is requested. Image is available for media use.
Today, Defend Them All (DTA) and the Center For Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for failing to meet its deadline to determine if the Tope Shark warrants protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA).
In response to a petition to list the Tope Shark submitted by DTA and CBD in 2022, the NMFS announced that the Tope Shark could warrant protection. Despite its legal obligation to decide by February 2023, NMFS has failed to issue a timely finding. The delay in ESA protection denies the Tope Shark essential legal protections and conservation measures that will minimize key threats to the species’ survival.
The Tope Shark, also known as the school shark or soupfin shark (due to its use in shark fin soup), is a small bentho-pelagic shark. The species lives in temperate, shallow waters along coastlines around the world in nearshore habitats including shallow bays where pups are raised and remain for up to two years before moving offshore. Because of its reliance on near-shore breeding areas, the Tope Shark is known to be particularly vulnerable to threats driving many aquatic species to extinction,
The Pacific Coast provides prime habitat for Tope Sharks, from La Jolla in San Diego County north to Washington state. The shark gathers in five zones: La Jolla in San Diego County, the rest of San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties (including Santa Catalina Island), Ventura and Santa Barbara counties (including the Northern Channel Islands), San Luis Obispo through Sonoma counties (including San Francisco Bay and the Farallon Islands), as well as Oregon and Washington.
The IUCN categorizes the Tope Shark as Critically Endangered based on its estimated 88% global population reduction, with the highest probability of >80% reduction over the last three generations (79 years).
Relentless overexploitation, habitat degradation, inadequate regulatory mechanisms and other manmade factors, including contaminants, are pushing the Tope Shark closer to extinction every day. As top predators, loss of this species would have cascading, detrimental effects on coastal benthic ecosystems already highly degraded by human activity. Federal protection will give this important top predator a fighting chance and must be prioritized.