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PRIMARY SOURCE
Florida, California, Hawaii, Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada.
SEASON
California thresher: August-January; Blacktip: April-August; Mako:
June-October. Imported supplies available year-round, but supplies
are spotty late December and early January.
FISHING METHOD
Gillnet, longline.
DEFECTS
° Ammonia odor.
° Gray meat color.
° Soft, mushy texture
SELLING POINTS
• Tender, boneless meat with an excellent savory flavor.
• Excellent value compared to swordfish and tuna.
• Some species such as blacktip are very attractive additions
to a seafood case.
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SCIENTIFIC NAME: Alopias vulpinus (Common thresher); Alopias
pelagicus (Pelagic thresher); Carcharinus limbatus (blacktip sharks);
Isurus oxyrinchus (shortfin mako) Squalus acanthias (spiny dogfish).
MARKET NAME(S): Shark, Thresher, Mako, Blacktip
SIZE RANGE: To 1,000 lbs., but typically 80 lbs. (blacktip)
to 200 lbs. (thresher). .
YIELD: From trunk to loins: 60-70%.
PRODUCT FORMS:
FRESH: Trunks, skin-off loins. FROZEN: Trunks, skin-off loins.
STORAGE & HANDLING:
Shark should bled and iced immediately after being caught. Properly
handled and well iced at 32°F, fresh shark will last up to 20
days from capture. Frozen shark will last up to a year if stored
at -5° to -15°F.
COOKING SUGGESTIONS
Shark has a firm meaty texture that is quite similar to swordfish,
which means it is excellent baked, broiled or grilled. Try it pan-seared
with onions and sage. Because it is on the lean side, many chefs
will marinate shark to keep it moist and increase its flavor profile.
Surprisingly, shark can be used for excellent fish and chips.
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Shark
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In many cases, sharks have
gotten too popular for their own good. As demand for their meaty,
white meat has increased, some shark populations are feeling the pressure.
Still, there are good supplies of the most popular species such as
thresher and blacktip shark available. But since there are more than
300 species of shark found around the world, its pays to know your
way around this family of fish.
In general smaller sharks (under 50 pounds) tend to be better eating,
as their flesh is more tender. There are exceptions, however; large
thresher and makos are very good eating sharks.
All sharks must be handled very carefully and bled quickly as they
lack a urinary system. Instead sharks (and skates) carry urea in their
blood and tissue and excrete it through their flesh by osmosis. After
a shark dies, its urea turns to ammonia, which can permeate the flesh
(soaking shark meat in a brine can remove the ammonia odor).
One reason Americans like shark: No bones. Instead of bony vertebrae,
sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton.
Thresher sharks, which are easily distinguished by their elongated
tail, are widely marketed in the U.S., usually fresh. Two threshers
are sold in the U.S.: the common, or “green,” thresher,
Alopias vulpinus, and the pelagic, or “brown,” thresher,
Alopias pelagicus. Threshers are large sharks that commonly weigh
more than 100 pounds.
The common thresher is fished off both the East and West coasts, although
more than 80% of the catch is made off California by gillnetters who
target thresher from August through October before the swordfish season
opens (during the swordfish fishery, thresher is landed as a bycatch).
Off the East Coast, thresher is a bycatch of the longline swordfish
fishery. Thresher landings in the U.S. average about 500 tons a year.
Pelagic threshers are both targeted and caught incidentally by hook
and line fishermen and gillnetters in the Pacific from Ecuador to
Mexico. Of the two species of thresher, common thresher is considered
superior eating because of its attractive pink flesh.
Named for the black coloring on the tip of their dorsal fin, blacktip
sharks, Carcharinus limbatus, are found throughout many of the warm
waters of the world. In the U.S., they are fished from the mid Atlantic
to the Gulf of Mexico, with average annual landings of about 200 tons
a year. A small shark, blacktip rarely exceed 80 pounds. Blacktip
are in great demand from retailers for their white meat and rosy bloodline,
which makes them a standout in a fish case. The name blacktip, however,
is applied generically to any small shark, especially spinner and
sandbar sharks. All of these sharks have dark dorsal fins and it is
very difficult to tell them apart as they look and taste almost alike.
Among seafood connoisseurs, the shortfin mako, Isurus oxyrinchus,
is considered the best eating shark (in fact it has been known to
be substituted for swordfish by less scrupulous seafood suppliers).
Makos are caught worldwide, primarily as an incidental catch in the
longline tuna and swordfish fisheries. U.S. fishermen catch about
250 tons of shortfin makos each year off both the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts. Makos are easily distinguished by their double bloodline.
About 1,000 tons of fresh shark are imported into the U.S. each year.
The leading suppliers are Mexico, Ecuador, Canada and Costa Rica.
Most of this shark is pelagic thresher. The largest shark fishery
in the world is for a number of species of small shark, which are
commonly known as dogfish. In the U.S., more than 20,000 tons of spiny
dogfish, Squalus acanthias, are caught, more than 95% of which is
landed by East Coast fishermen. Most of the dogfish caught in the
U.S. is exported to Europe. In Germany it is often smoked. In England,
where dogfish is called “rock salmon,” it is used in fish
n’ chips. |
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The
Pacific Advantage
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Specialist
in large, high-quality, green thresher sharks from California
fishery.
Purchase only mature sharks to protect the fishery. |
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