Britain has more than 40 shark species in its waters, yet scientists know surprisingly little about most of them. A new three-year project, co-led by Dr Lucy Hawkes and Dr Matthew Witt at the University of Exeter, aims to change that by combining electronic tagging, DNA sampling, and decades of recreational fishing records into a unified picture of where porbeagle, tope, and blue sharks feed, mate, and migrate. Natural England has awarded almost £1m to the effort, which partners the Exeter lab with the Marine Biological Association, the Angling Trust, and the Pat Smith Database — an online record of shark catches dating back to 1953. The database is the backbone: even the entire population of UK shark researchers couldn't match the geographic coverage that 3 million recreational anglers provide, according to marine biologist Dr Francesco Garzon. The project will deploy 40 short-duration tags (£1,500 each, 45-day lifespan) to measure post-release survival, and 30 long-duration tags (£4,500 each, roughly one year) that reconstruct a shark's path, diving depth, and duration. DNA samples — tiny fin clips or cotton-bud swabs — will map genetic connectivity between populations, potentially revealing whether a French blue shark is closely related to an English one, or whether species like tope aggregate to mate in specific locations such as northern Scotland. The citizen-science angle is not decorative. UK recreational shark fishing is now entirely catch-and-release, and the shift from weighing dead fish to measuring live ones in the water has made angler data scientifically useful. Hawkes likens shark anglers to bird ringers — obsessive, conservation-conscious amateurs who log thousands of hours at sea. The team plans in-person workshops and interviews with hundreds of anglers from south-west to north-east England to deepen the data pipeline. Direct commercial fishing and accidental bycatch remain the biggest threats for UK sharks. If tagging reveals that sharks travel into waters where a particular fishery has high bycatch rates, that data becomes directly relevant to conservation policy. The project is designed to produce actionable intelligence, not just academic papers. The mutual trust between researchers and the angling community is load-bearing infrastructure here. Years of time spent on boats together — initially tagging bluefin tuna — built the relationship. That social capital is what makes a £1m research budget stretch far further than its face value, because the sensing network is already in place and self-motivated. The underlying logic is sound: Britain has a world-class recreational fishing culture, a 70-year dataset sitting in the Pat Smith Database, and a near-total knowledge gap on its own shark populations. Connecting those dots with modern tagging and genetics is an efficient use of public money that could directly inform fisheries management and marine conservation policy.
