The spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias is not the type of sexy shark that Spielberg would make a movie about. No one has ever been terrorized by a mud shark. Fishermen sometimes get jabbed by a fin spine when they are trying to remove dogfish from their nets but other than that dogfish are more or less harmless.
Perhaps that was true until a few years ago when (according to fishermen) spiny dogfish became public enemy number one. If they are to be believed, dogfish are now the biggest natural threat to the survival of Western Atlantic fisheries.

The problem arises from a potential miscalculation on the part of researchers. Fisheries surveys conducted along the eastern seaboard of the US some years ago, indicated that although there were quite a few dogfish still at large, almost all of them were male. This led to fears that the population was heading for a crash and strict catch limits were put in place.
Again according to the fishermen, the survey was misleading and the leniency afforded to dogfish has led to a population explosion relative to other species. The dogfishes’ omnivorous appetite is now decimating the remaining fish stocks from New England to the Carolinas.
That sounds pretty bad but lets not dust off the long-lines just yet. Firstly, I’d like to see some concrete empirical evidence that all these anecdotal reports of marauding dogfish are true. Secondly even if they are, spiny dogfish are pack hunters. Swarming over the seabed like locusts is part of their natural behavior. Although I wasn’t around to witness diving in the good old days, I’ve heard some fantastic reports from British Columbian scuba divers that were active in the 1980s. Campfire tales of a wall of dogfish sweeping over the seafloor like the sandstorm scene from The Mummy. What a glorious site that must have been to be swimming along looking for Giant Pacific Octopuses on the reef and suddenly be engulfed in a tumbling maelstrom of meter long sharks.

The problems that the east coast fishermen are currently facing, speaks volumes about the sad state of our oceans in general. Where are the larger sharks that should be preying on spiny dogfish? And how did the ground fish and lobster stocks get so depleted that a school of dogfish can pose such an enormous threat?

Culling sharks to save the fish reminds me of the sophistical justification behind the controversial harp seal hunt. They’re looking at the problem backwards. If you want the fish stocks to recover, don’t kill the sharks, kill the fishermen.

Down Rambo! I don’t mean that literally. But perhaps a moratorium on depleted fish stocks would be a better way to handle the dogfish problem. How about we quit playing god and leave the oceans alone for a while to find their own balance.

Incidentally, BC is still a great place to dive with spiny dogfish. They are nowhere near as common as they used to be but a drift dive along the beautiful strawberry anemone covered walls around Quadra Island will still yield a handful of curious dogfish.

For further information contact
Abyssal Divers: http://www.abyssal.com.
Read more about spiny dogfish sharks on Elasmodiver: http://www.elasmodiver.com/spiny_dogfish.htm

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