Global hotspots of shark interactions with industrial longline fisheries

This repository contains code used in the paper: Burns, E. S., Bradley, D., & Thomas, L. R. (2023). Global hotspots of shark interactions with industrial longline fisheries. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.1062447 All code is written in R. Sharks are susceptible to industrial longline fishing due to their slow life histories and association with targeted tuna stocks. Identifying fished areas with high shark interaction risk is vital to protect threatened species. We harmonize shark catch records from global tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (tRFMOs) from 2012-2020 and use machine learning to identify where sharks are most threatened by longline fishing. Most spatial patterns are driven by more common species such as blue sharks, though risk areas for less common, endangered and critically endangered species are also identified