Received: 11 May 2018 Accepted: 24 September 2018 DOI: 10.1111/conl.12612 POLICY PERSPECTIVE Individual shark profiling: An innovative and environmentally responsible approach for selectively managing human fatalities Eric E. G. Clua1,2 John D. C. Linnell3 1 EPHE, PSL Research University, Perpignan, Abstract France Most shark-induced human fatalities are followed by widespread and unselective 2Labex Corail, CRIOBE, Moorea, French Polynesia culling campaigns that have limited effectiveness and may have high ecological costs 3Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, for threatened species. The blanket culling strategy implicitly assumes that incident Trondheim, Norway risk is directly correlated with shark density, an assumption that has yet to be demon- Correspondence strated. We present the alternative hypothesis that incidents are more likely to be Eric E. G. Clua, EPHE, PSL Research Univer- sity, CRIOBE USR3278 EPHE-CNRS-UPVD, caused by behavioral variability among individual sharks than due to shark density. F-66860 Perpignan, France. Throughout their ontogenetic development, large species of sharks opportunistically Email: [email protected] establish a diet that is rarely, if ever, inclusive of humans as a food source. We pro- ORCID: D-7820-2013 pose that, some animals with specific behaviors (including boldness) may potentially Editor Matt W.Hayward pose a higher risk than conspecifics. Under this scenario, the risk of a shark attack in a given area would relate to the presence of a limited number of high-risk individuals rather than shark density. In terms of management of human fatalities, such a hypothesis would favor aban- doning general culling campaigns and replacing them with approaches that profile and selectively remove the potential problem individuals, as is done in the terrestrial realm when managing predators that attack humans or livestock. KEYWORDS agonistic behavior, blanket culling campaigns, carnivore risk management, fatal attack, human-wildlife conflict, problem individuals 1 INTRODUCTION campaigns such as those conducted over the past 5 years in Western Australia (Gallagher, 2016) and on the French island of La Reunion (Cressey, 2013). These campaigns have Widespread lethal control of predators has historically been detrimental effects on the conservation status of already the most common strategy used in response to wildlife threatened species and their effectiveness is questionable attacks on humans (Rasker & Hackman, 1996). In the (Ferretti, Jorgensen, Chapple, De Leo, & Micheli, 2015). terrestrial realm (Table 1), these unselective policies have Besides the negative ecological impact, these campaigns been increasingly replaced by more selective approaches that also failed to alleviate the impact of the shark “attack” crisis focus on individual “man-eaters” or “problem individuals” on local economies that rely on tourism (Lagabrielle et al., (Swan, Redpath, Bearhop, & McDonald, 2017), however, 2018). Part of the reason that such ineffective campaigns little has changed in the marine realm. For sharks, behaviors continue may be that managers have lacked the evidence toward humans that end in fatalities still lead to culling demonstrating why culling campaigns are largely ineffective. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Conservation Letters. 2018;e12612. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/conl 1of7 https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12612 2of7 CLUA AND LINNELL TABLE 1 A set of questions that can help understand the mechanisms of shark attacks and help develop appropriate management responses Hypothesis Type Question Reaction Density-dependent None Are shark bites widespread, regular, If yes, then general lethal control of mechanisms and related to shark density? sharks to lower shark density may be appropriate to the extent that it is viewed as acceptable, or there is a need to implement widespread mitigation. Behavioral Type 1 Problem Question 1: Does the attacking species If it is only an occasional vagrant, then mechanisms individual – an of shark normally reside in the area no reaction is needed or indeed individual in the wrong of the bite or is it only an occasional possible apart from being ready to place and unpredictable occurrence? react to events with beach closures Question 2: Are bite locations If attacks are spatially clumped, then it associated with specific landscape is possible to discourage risky human features (prey aggregations, activities in such areas or implement movement corridors, or underwater mitigation measures such as netting topography that serves some other on these sites. function for sharks) that lead to locally high densities of sharks? Type 2 Problem Question 3: Do individual sharks or If the answer to these questions is yes, individual – sharks of specific age and sex, then it opens the way for a selective individuals with a demonstrate consistent feeding removal of individuals. specific “undesirable” specializations? behavior Question 4: Do individual sharks or sharks of specific age and sex, demonstrate consistent responses to humans (or human decoys)? Question 5: Are shark bites spatially and temporally aggregated into clusters? Question 6: Is it possible to forensically identify problem individual and then recognize them in the field? Question 7: If a shark is identified as a perpetrator can it be located and selectively removed? Note: This is largely based on the conceptualization of problem animals developed from terrestrial carnivores (Linnell & Alleau, 2015; Linnell et al., 1999). Based on experience from terrestrial systems, we propose 2 THE BEHAVIORAL HYPOTHESIS a new approach for improving sea-users’ safety that addresses the likely pattern of shark incidents and explains the failure Shark-culling campaigns as a response to human fatalities of culling campaigns to reduce the risk in a satisfactory way, after a shark incident are conducted to reduce the prob- both in terms of human safety and ecological impact. We pro- ability of shark-human interactions (Dudley, 1997), based pose that new studies (Table 2) should be undertaken to iden- on the implicit assumption that human fatalities are driven tify individual sharks in order to eventually selectively cull by greater-than-acceptable shark abundance (Ferretti et al., “problem” animals. This approach has the potential to reduce 2015), which we refer to as the “density-dependent hypoth- the negative ecological effects currently posed by nonselec- esis.” In other words, reducing the risk of human fatalities by tive shark culling campaigns, to alleviate the conflicts with reducing the shark population de facto relies on the assump- communities opposed to them, and might also help to globally tion that every shark represents an equal risk level to humans. improve the relationship between humans and sharks world- It also assumes that lowering the density of sharks will lower wide. the probability of a human being killed (Figure 1). CLUA AND LINNELL 3of7 TABLE 2 Research themes to be developed following the behavioral hypothesis aiming at the selective removal of problem individuals in the context of human fatalities Questions Approaches to be tested 1. Better knowledge of 1.1 Acoustic taggingc for identifying the presence of potential problem individuals in a dangerous species given area (i.e., a beach) 1.2 Satellite taggingd for studying the ecological behavior of potential problem individuals 2. Identification of problem 2.1 Underwater photoidentificatione and photogrammetryf (for size assessment) of individuals individuals combined with ethological testsg for assessment of risky behaviors (i.e., individual variation and consistency in boldness or aggression) toward humans 2.2 Live capture and blood sampling for assessment of hormones as indicators of boldnessh,i 2.3 Forensic analysis of human bites/fatalities for identifying the species and individualj,k (size assessment through interdental distance) 2.4 Collection of shark DNA fragments on human wounds (after a bite) to identify the species (barcoding on mitochondrial DNAl) and the individual (fingerprinting on microsatellitesm) 3. Removal of problem 3.1 Species and size assessment through underwater photogrammetryf for assessing the individualsa size of potential attackers (which could match with existing data; see 2.3) 3.2 DNA sampling (biopsies) for individual fingerprintingm (on microsatellites) and development of a database of potential attackers. This would allow a potential match with data obtained from human victims (see 2.4) Note: For questions 2 and 3, it is suggested to use odor attractants or artificial food provisioningb in order to temporarily aggregate large sharks as they are very elusive animals. Such aggregations would allow facilitated studies of behaviors, DNA and blood sampling, tagging, or even fishing (removal) of specific individuals. aThis could be done underwater following the matching of DNA fingerpriting obtained from a human victim (see 2.4) and from the parallel DNA sampling of animals (see 3.2). The problem individual to be removed would then be reidentified on the aggregation site through photoidentification and accurate size assessment through photogrammetry (see 2.1). bBrena, P.F., Mourier, J., Planes, S. & Clua, E. (2015) Shark and ray provisioning: functional insights into behavioral, ecological and physiological