A normal Friday morning at the Asan Beach Memorial Park led to a shocking discovery when a beachgoer noticed a gillnet abandoned in the waters, with several baby sharks trapped and dead. 

“So DAWR (Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources) staff responded to that and recovered the gill net and recovered eight dead baby black tip sharks,” said Biologist Brent Tibbatts with the Guam Department of Agriculture's Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources. 

Tibbatts says the DAWR is investigating the incident. 

“Looking at the size and weight, they’re probably less than a month old. A week old is about this size, so they were pretty young,” added Tibbatts. 

Black Tip Reef sharks are non- aggressive, known to frequent Guam’s shallow waters, and are commonly spotted by snorkelers and divers. 

They maintain coral reef health and also have local significance. 

“Reef sharks like this do good things for the reef fish population, around the world but certainly on Guam. They really are an important part of the ecosystem and should be there. To lose eight like this is really unfortunate,” said Tibbatts. 

One of the few fishing regulations, Guam, has prohibited the abandonment of gillnets, or vertical walls of netting used to trap fish. 

“When you set a gillnet, it has to be manned. There needs to be somebody watching it. And this is one of the main reasons. If you catch something you don’t want, then you can release them before it’s killed,” added Tibbatts. 

The Black Tip Reef shark is fished for shark-fin soup. While that’s legal, its commercial sale is not. A Guam law passed in 2010 bans the possession and sale of shark parts. 

“You can’t commercialize the fin. If you sell a shark, it has to have its fins intact,” he said. “Also if you kill things you’re not planning to harvest, that’s wanton waste and that’s also a violation of Guam law. So abandoned gillnet and wanton waste are the two violations you’re dealing with.”

They’re important legal protections in place to prevent incidents like this from happening. 

“If you are gillnet fishing, make sure you know what the regulations are. You can’t leave a net out longer than six hours and it has to be manned. Somebody has to be watching it the entire time to release non-target species. There are length regulations and mesh size regulations for gillnets. And it is illegal to sell fish caught with a gillet,” added Tibbatts. 

Meantime, DAWR is also actively investigating another incident after a larger, mature Black Tip shark was found dead on Sunday night in the same area, though not in a gillnet. 

If you have any information on either incidents or if you see an abandoned gillnet, call DAWR at (671) 735-0294.