By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Greenland’s government has stopped a controversial program that would have paid fishermen approximately $45 for each Greenland shark killed, blocking a proposed cull of 1,000 animals as commercial fishing operators continue to report substantial financial losses from encounters with the exceptionally long-lived predators.
The suspension followed legal questions about whether local authorities possessed the power to authorize the killings. The initiative had been approved by officials in Avannaata, a municipality in northwestern Greenland where fishing is a major source of employment and income. Although the proposed bounty is no longer authorized, fishermen and local leaders continue to seek measures to reduce damage to equipment and losses of commercially valuable fish.
The dispute has attracted international attention because Greenland sharks, scientifically known as Somniosus microcephalus, can survive for more than four centuries and are believed to reach reproductive maturity at approximately 150 years of age. Their extraordinarily slow development means that removing large numbers could affect populations for generations.
Recent reporting by The Guardian described the growing conflict between fishermen dependent on Greenland’s halibut and cod fisheries and marine conservationists who argue that large-scale killing would threaten an already vulnerable species without resolving the industry’s underlying difficulties.
The Avannaata municipal council approved the bounty initiative earlier this year, proposing payments of 300 Danish kroner, approximately $45, for each Greenland shark heart delivered by fishermen. The program was intended to encourage the removal of 1,000 sharks from local fishing grounds, where the animals frequently become entangled in longlines or feed on fish caught on commercial hooks.
The municipality allocated 300,000 Danish kroner for the planned payments, drawing on funding intended for pest control. The initiative was subsequently halted after Greenland’s government questioned its legality, leaving the proposed killings unauthorized.
Local officials defended the effort as a response to financial problems facing fishing communities, where damaged equipment can represent a substantial expense for small operators.
“We need to safeguard the income of fishers and the catch so that we can continue to eat the foods that we have relied on for generations,” Avannaata Mayor Lars Erik Gabrielsen said, according to a report examining the disputed bounty program.
Greenland’s commercial fishing industry is heavily dependent on Greenland halibut and Atlantic cod, two species that also form part of the Greenland shark’s diet.
The sharks inhabit deep, cold waters where commercial fishing vessels operate, creating repeated opportunities for interactions with fishing gear. When sharks approach hooked fish, they can become entangled in the lines, break the equipment or remove catches before fishermen can retrieve them.
Greenland sharks can grow to approximately 20 feet or more in length and possess enough strength and body mass to damage equipment designed for catching substantially smaller fish.
The financial consequences can be particularly severe for fishermen who operate small boats and must purchase or repair their own gear.
Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old fisherman working near Ilulissat on Greenland’s western coast, described the cumulative cost of repeated encounters with the sharks.
“This year I’ve lost around 6,000 hooks in total. Sometimes we lose 30,000 Danish krone a day,” Jensen told The Guardian.
The daily loss he described amounts to approximately $4,500, a significant expense for an individual fishing operation.
Jensen has spent roughly a decade fishing for halibut in the waters around Ilulissat, Greenland’s third-largest town. He operates approximately an hour north of the community’s main fishing grounds, where larger halibut can be found but encounters with Greenland sharks are also common.
For fishermen working in these waters, losing thousands of hooks can mean more than the immediate cost of replacing metal equipment. Severed longlines may prevent crews from completing a day’s fishing, reduce the number of fish landed and require additional time and money to restore operations.
Timotheus Petersen, chairman of the fishing association in Kullorsuaq, also described the burden of replacing damaged longlines, which can cost approximately 1,599 Danish kroner each.
“When the sharks cut our lines, we cannot finish fishing,” Petersen told The Guardian. “We have to spend more money and buy new gear.”
Such problems have persisted for decades, but increasing economic pressures within Greenland’s fishing industry have intensified demands for government intervention.
The proposed bounty was not Greenland’s first attempt to reduce shark numbers through financial incentives.
Earlier programs operated in other communities, including Aasiaat and Uummannaq. In the former Aasiaat municipality, authorities previously offered payments of 200 Danish kroner for Greenland shark hearts.
A program operating in the former Uummannaq municipality between 1986 and 2001 resulted in the collection of 19,697 shark hearts, according to historical figures cited in a 2007 report from the Technical University of Denmark.
Those figures have become relevant to the present dispute because scientists remain concerned about the cumulative effects of historical commercial exploitation and modern accidental catches.
Greenland sharks were once targeted extensively for their large, oil-rich livers, which were used to produce industrial oil before commercial demand declined.
The directed fishery largely ended during the 1960s, but the species continues to be caught unintentionally in fisheries targeting other marine animals.
At the height of historical harvesting in 1948, approximately 58,000 Greenland sharks were landed, illustrating the scale of the earlier industry.
The species has not been subjected to the same level of modern commercial targeting, but its slow reproduction raises questions about whether populations have fully recovered from historical depletion.
Scientists believe Greenland sharks have the longest known lifespans of any vertebrate species.
Researchers have estimated their ages by analyzing proteins preserved in the lenses of their eyes, structures that retain information from the animals’ early development.
A landmark 2016 study published in Science estimated that the largest Greenland sharks examined could be nearly 400 years old, with considerable uncertainty surrounding individual age estimates. The research established that some individuals may survive for centuries and that females may not reach sexual maturity until approximately 150 years of age.
A shark living in Arctic waters today could therefore have been born during the 1700s, before many modern nations developed their current political boundaries. Some exceptionally old individuals could potentially date to the early 1600s, although assigning an exact birth year to a living animal remains scientifically difficult.
This extraordinary lifespan is accompanied by exceptionally slow growth and reproductive development.
The animals are believed to reproduce infrequently, with some estimates suggesting gestation could last more than a decade. Scientists caution, however, that major details of Greenland shark reproduction remain poorly understood, including the precise duration of pregnancy.
Their delayed maturity means that replacing an adult killed by fishing activity may take far longer than it would for most commercially harvested fish species.
Marine biologist Julius Nielsen, who has studied Greenland sharks for more than a decade, warned that a bounty program encouraging the removal of large numbers could have consequences extending beyond Greenland’s waters.
“Greenland sharks are extremely long-lived, highly migratory, and important predators in the Arctic and deep North Atlantic,” Nielsen said in a statement published by conservation organization Oceans North Kalaallit Nunaat.
“Initiating a bounty system of this magnitude is a risky path – especially if this type of management spreads to other Arctic regions, as it could have an impact on a population which is likely still recovering from the big commercial harvest in the last century.”
Nielsen argued that any management decisions involving Greenland sharks should be based on scientific assessments of population health, reproduction and the potential consequences of increased mortality.
The sharks were classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List in 2020, a designation reflecting concerns about their exposure to fishing pressure and their limited ability to replenish depleted populations.
As PEOPLE reported in its examination of the proposed cull, the vulnerability classification has become central to conservationists’ objections to a program that would deliberately increase the number of sharks killed.
Estimates cited by marine researchers suggest approximately 3,500 Greenland sharks are caught unintentionally worldwide each year.
The species’ estimated population trend is declining, although precise abundance figures remain uncertain because the sharks inhabit remote waters and spend much of their time at depths that are difficult to monitor.
Greenland sharks are found across a substantial portion of the Arctic and North Atlantic, including waters surrounding Greenland, northern Canada and parts of northern Europe.
Unlike species that remain concentrated in small territories, Greenland sharks can move substantial distances. Researchers have documented annual movements approaching 1,240 miles, complicating attempts to control their numbers within individual fishing areas.
That migratory behavior is one reason conservationists question whether a localized cull would provide lasting benefits.
If sharks are removed from particular fishing grounds, other individuals could eventually move into the same area, potentially restoring the conditions that prompted fishermen to request the killings.
The conservation organization Oceans North Kalaallit Nunaat has argued that repeatedly killing sharks would therefore risk increasing mortality without producing a sustainable reduction in conflicts between fishing operations and marine predators.
Marine conservationist Nick Dulvy, a professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, expressed particular concern about the biological effects of removing hundreds or thousands of Greenland sharks.
“If somebody says, ‘I’m going to cull a couple of thousand Greenland sharks’, that’s a disaster in my opinion,” Dulvy told The Guardian.
“They are probably – biologically – the most sensitive species in the ocean to overfishing,” he added.
Conservationists also question whether shark encounters are the principal cause of the difficulties facing Greenland’s fishing industry.
Fishing accounts for roughly one-quarter of Greenland’s gross domestic product, making its performance central to the territory’s economy.
Despite rising prices for Greenland halibut, researchers have documented declines in the average size of fish landed in some fisheries. Competition among fishing vessels, quota pressures and operating expenses have also contributed to concerns about the long-term sustainability of the industry.
Jenseeraq Poulsen, director of Oceans North Kalaallit Nunaat, argued that killing sharks would not resolve those economic conditions.
“If every Greenland shark in Baffin Bay vanished tomorrow, the inshore fishery in Avannaata would still face too many boats working a quota under pressure, rising costs and no alternative employment,” Poulsen told The Guardian. “When margins are narrow, a longstanding nuisance becomes intolerable.”
Jensen similarly acknowledged that competition from offshore fishing vessels has affected the availability of fish in the areas where he operates.
Although he said fishing remains a viable livelihood, he described deploying fewer hooks and catching fewer fish than in previous years, attributing part of the problem to fishing pressure from larger vessels.
Equipment discarded or lost in the water creates another problem for Greenland’s fishing communities.
Abandoned fishing lines, commonly called ghost gear, can remain underwater for extended periods. Such equipment can entangle other lines, damage active fishing operations and trap marine animals long after it has been lost.
Jensen said encounters with abandoned fishing gear have become increasingly problematic.
“There are more and more ‘ghost lines’ and they are too heavy to pull up by the machine we use,” he told The Guardian.
Recovery of ghost gear has consequently emerged as one possible alternative to reducing shark populations.
Halibut Greenland, a cooperatively owned fish-processing company in Ilulissat, has provided financial support for removing abandoned fishing equipment from surrounding waters.
Oceans North Kalaallit Nunaat has identified such recovery programs as a potentially more effective approach than deliberate shark killing because they address a source of equipment damage affecting fishermen regardless of shark activity.
The organization has also proposed establishing compensation for fishermen who lose equipment during shark encounters.
Such a program could help reduce financial pressure on small operators without requiring the removal of large numbers of a vulnerable marine species.
Additional proposals include testing acoustic devices designed to discourage sharks from approaching fishing equipment and introducing gear modifications intended to reduce accidental entanglement.
Acoustic deterrents would require testing under actual fishing conditions before their effectiveness could be established, particularly given the limited scientific understanding of Greenland shark behavior.
Officials within Greenland’s Ministry of Fisheries, Hunting, Agriculture and Self-Sufficiency have also discussed possible improvements to fishing gear requirements and reporting procedures.
Rebekka Nygård Bak, an adviser to the ministry, suggested that equipment designed to reduce accidental shark catches could help address the conflict.
Better reporting of bycatch incidents would also provide scientists and policymakers with information needed to evaluate how frequently sharks interfere with fishing operations and which fishing methods pose the greatest risks.
Reliable reporting is especially important because scientists lack comprehensive data about the Greenland shark population and the long-term effects of fishing-related mortality.
The dispute also raises questions about whether relatively small financial incentives would persuade fishermen to deliberately catch animals that are difficult to handle.
Although the proposed $45 bounty would compensate fishermen for each shark heart delivered, capturing a large Greenland shark may require heavier lines, specialized hooks and additional labor.
Some fishermen have questioned whether the payment would cover those expenses.
The challenges associated with bringing a shark weighing hundreds of pounds aboard a small vessel could make the program less attractive than its sponsors anticipated.
Even so, conservationists maintain that establishing a financial reward for killing the animals could encourage unnecessary mortality and create a precedent for similar programs in other Arctic fishing communities.
Greenland’s status as a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark adds another dimension to the dispute.
The territory exercises substantial authority over its domestic affairs, including fisheries and natural-resource management. Municipal governments also make decisions affecting local economic activity, but their authority remains subject to Greenlandic law and national regulatory oversight.
The government’s intervention in the Avannaata bounty program reflected those legal limits rather than a permanent resolution of the underlying disagreement.
For fishermen facing repeated financial losses, the suspension leaves the practical problem of damaged lines and lost catches unresolved. For scientists, the decision has prevented an immediate increase in deliberate harvesting of a species whose reproductive biology makes recovery from population losses exceptionally slow.
The debate is likely to continue as Greenland’s fishing communities seek government assistance and regulators consider alternatives involving equipment standards, compensation, bycatch management and additional scientific research.
Any renewed proposal to authorize large-scale killing would face questions about its legality, potential effectiveness and compatibility with conservation responsibilities.
The Greenland shark’s exceptional longevity makes those decisions especially consequential. Individual animals swimming through the Arctic today may have survived centuries of environmental changes and human activity, while new sharks entering the adult breeding population may require well over a century to mature.
For now, the proposed 1,000-shark bounty remains halted, but the conflict between protecting fishing livelihoods and conserving one of the world’s longest-lived marine predators has yet to be resolved.
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