(uplifting music) - [Narrator] Beautiful Belize.

Abundant tropical rainforests, towering jungle mountains, and vivid coral reefs.

With nearly 36% of its land and 20% of its ocean territory safeguarded within protected reserves, this small, developing country stands out as a world leader in conservation.

- [Beverly] We have had a long history of conservation, both from the terrestrial side and also from the marine side.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Belize recently made a bold commitment to preserving its stunning off-shore ecosystems for future generations, with a pledge to extend marine protections to 30% by 2026.

This move marks more than four decades of sustainable management informed by science.

(gentle piano music) - [Demian] In the late '80s and '90s, they established the world's first jaguar reserve, the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary.

That was based on research by several people, including Dr. Alan Rabinowitz.

- [Narrator] Using data collected from remote cameras and animal tagging, panthera-founder Alan Rabinowitz, a world expert on wild cats, inspired the Belizean government to protect its critical jaguar habitat in 1986.

Today, marine scientists are using similar methods to inform management decisions about critical shark habitat, effectively creating the "Cockscomb of the Sea."

- [Demian] So, we do all those same things here on the atolls, but for sharks.

It's sort of the jaguars of the ocean.

- [Narrator] Shark populations here serve not only an essential ecological role in the reef system, but they are paramount to the country's tourism industry and national fisheries, requiring the government of Belize to strike a delicate balance between stakeholders.

- [Kenneth] Conservation goes hand-in-hand with livelihood; if you conserve something, it doesn't mean you cannot fish it.

It just means that you need to now operate in a more sustainable manner to ensure that you have this fishery for a very long time, not just for you, but for your kids.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In a pioneering collaboration, marine scientists and local fishers work together to collect data on shark abundance inside and outside the protected areas.

- [Scientist] 173.

- [Narrator] These long-term surveys provide the Fisheries Department with what they need to manage shark populations sustainably.

- [Jessica] The most efficient and most effective management plan that you can have is one where the people who actually use the resource wanna be involved, care about it and wanna protect it.

- [Scientist] All right.

Tag number 836.

- [Narrator] More than 20 years in the making, these collaborative efforts to better understand shark behavior have already resulted in marine conservation successes.

How are scientists, fishers and managers working together to build more sustainable fisheries in Belize?

And what does the future hold for local shark populations, the jaguars of the sea?

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by the Batchelor Foundation, encouraging people to preserve and protect America's underwater resources.

Additional funding was provided by Trish and Dan Bell and by the Parrot Family Endowment for Environmental Education.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator] The Belize Barrier Reef forms part of the second-largest coral reef system in the world.

(uplifting music) This UNESCO World Heritage Site is home to a diverse array of marine life, including top predators, like lemon sharks, nurse sharks, tiger sharks, and Caribbean reef sharks.

- Sharks are an iconic species.

They play an extremely important role in maintaining the balance in our reef ecosystems, and it's important for us to have them there and to have them in the numbers that they play that role.

- [Narrator] Shark populations in Belize are also integral to the tourism industry and national financial security.

Regionally, they're essential to the livelihood of local fishers, who sell their catch in the international shark meat trade.

(gentle music) In Belize City, the nation's resource managers bear the responsibility of weighing these demands and keeping shark populations healthy.

- The balancing between conservation and sustaining livelihood of fishers has always been a challenge on all fisheries.

And that is the reason why, when we implement management measures, it needs to be backed up by science.

It's not something that we just want to protect a species, but we need to know why.

- [Narrator] The Belize Fisheries Department has long partnered with ocean scientists, like Mote Marine Laboratory's Dr. Demian Chapman, to provide critical data about life on the reefs.

- We call the coral reefs now a social ecological system.

So, you have the animals, the corals, the sharks, the fish, but you have to have the human element considered as well.

You know, I love sharks, I don't wanna see any sharks die, but I have to acknowledge that the shark fishermen need to make a livelihood, and their children need to make a livelihood, so we need to find a balance that works for everybody.

- These people who are closest to the actual resource have an important role at the end of the day to contribute to the long-term survival, conservation, and sustainability of that very small-scale fishery that they've been involved in for generations.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In 2014, as then head of the Fisheries Department, Beverly Wade convened the National Shark Working Group, a task force of scientists, managers, NGOs and fishers charged with making knowledge-based recommendations for the fisheries.

(gentle Latin American music) Key to this working group are the fisherfolk of Riversdale, a small village of 100 residents just 50 miles down the coast from Belize City.

The local families here have been fishing these reefs for generations.

- I've been fishing for quite a while, but my parents, my aunt, my mom, they're doing fishing before us.

My uncle, Roy, he used to do shark long before us, and back in the days, there was plenty of shark, plenty.

- Way back when I was a kid, they started to buy whole sharks and we just tried to get one or two, but we couldn't get them.

They were so big.

There was giant seven, eight-foot, 10-foot bull sharks.

I've been fishing like 45 years, so I saw a lot of sharks in my life, big schools.

- I grew up in the fishing industry.

I grew up with my grandparents, and they were fisherfolks, so I started off like hand-line fishing, and then when I was about 15, I started working sharks with Omar.

- For me, it's a fun job.

Some other people might think, you know, you're killing out the sharks, but it's a fisheries.

It's a good way of making my income beside lobster and other fishing.

- [Narrator] Unlike the wasteful and ecologically destructive practice of shark finning, in which only the fin of the shark is harvested, shark fishers in Belize land the entire fish as part of the regional shark meat trade with Guatemala.

- When we fish shark, we use everything off the shark.

We sell the meat, we use also the liver to make oil.

You know, we use everything from the animal.

We don't catch where we don't need and we don't throw away, and we do it in a good way.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In 2018, the Riversdale fishers began working on the water with Demian Chapman's research team to tag and release sharks, providing invaluable knowledge along the way.

- We share a lot of information.

Certain areas, we even give them local names, like, we got here, we call it "Hammerhead Alley."

Certain areas, certain time of the month, that certain, like, certain species will gather at certain areas.

So we kind of share that information with them too, you know, it's kind of a back and forth.

- Working with the fishers has been rewarding on so many levels.

They're just so knowledgeable of the area, the species, the habits, the seasons, what affects them, you know, what gear is best to use with them.

It's literally taken them a lifetime, right, to figure it out, so, I'm certainly not gonna figure it out in my five-year, six-year Ph.D.

So, I mean, working with them has been paramount to the success of what we do, for sure.

- [Narrator] This unique collaboration is the result of long-term trust-building by both fishers and researchers.

Its origins lie more than two decades in the past and 30 miles offshore at Glover's Reef.

(gentle music) - So, Glover's Reef is a coral atoll.

It's one of only four coral atolls in the whole Western Hemisphere.

So, it's a really special environment, and it has a research station run by Wildlife Conservation Society.

It's been my home away from home for about 23 years.

- [Narrator] Set up in 1993 as a no-take fishing area, Glover's Reef Marine Reserve is where Demian Chapman and his team conduct the bulk of their shark studies in Belize.

- There's two kinds of research that we do here, broadly speaking.

There's theoretical stuff, very academic, and there's a big chunk of our research that's very applied, which means it's stuff that the government needs to know, the fishermen need to know, in order to manage a sustainable fishery.

That's things like, how abundant are they?

How is that changing over time?

That's critical information for management.

- There are very few places throughout the world that are actually tracking abundance within protected areas, let alone in places where they're not fished.

They usually track abundance inside and outside at one point in time.

But what's really important for management is that we get these long-term abundance trends over time.

(gentle music) - [Demian] So, we use Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations, or BRUVS, as a sampling tool to get an idea of sort of like sharks per hour, how many sharks you see for every hour you put down.

- [Katie] All right.

Camera recording.

- [Demian] It's basically an action camera on a frame with one kilo of bait stuck in the front, and it attracts animals, all kinds of fish, including sharks in.

And then of course they get caught on camera and gives us a way to get a sense of how many there are in a given area.

- [Katie] Okay, here we go.

- [Narrator] From 2006 to 2016, scientists and volunteers watched hundreds of hours of BRUVS surveys to track the abundance of sharks at Glover's Reef.

(gentle music) They logged nurse sharks, a nationally protected species, as well as lemon sharks and hammerheads, but their most significant finding concerned Belize's iconic Caribbean reef sharks.

- The Caribbean reef shark is a really important species.

They are important because they are tourism resources, so, people come and pay money to see them swimming, and they are one of the most abundant predators on coral reefs in this region.

- [Narrator] While long-line surveys showed a stable population of these reef sharks for more than a decade, in 2016, researchers saw a drastic decline of the species in the BRUVS recordings.

This data resulted in what Demian's team refers to as a "red flag."

- A "red flag" is something that we see in our data that tells us that the sharks are going in the wrong direction.

It means their populations are going down.

And a lot of that was because of fishing along the boundary.

So, it was perfectly legal for these guys to be fishing, but they were fishing just too close to the edge and picking off the reef sharks that would swim a little ways out.

- So, we were able to share our data with the Belize Fisheries Department and the National Shark Working Group so that they were able to act quickly, come together, and make a decision about what the best management strategy would be to protect sharks moving forward.

- [Scientist] 32.

- [Narrator] With this data in hand, the National Shark Working Group recommended a two-mile extension of the marine reserve boundary around all three protected atolls.

This buffer zone was made official by the Fisheries Department in 2020.

- So, the fishermen can still fish, but they're just further away.

So, they'll pick up the sharks like tigers that they wanna get, but they'll leave the baby reef sharks alone so that they can grow up and reproduce and maintain a healthy population in the protected area.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Demian's team is also documenting species abundance using long-line shark surveys.

While they now work hand-in-hand with the Riversdale fishers, this collaboration was not always an assured success.

After seeing the National Shark Working Group gain traction, Beverly Wade encouraged researchers to work even closer with local fishers and tap into their extensive on-the-water knowledge.

- [Demian] It's funny because when Beverly first brought us together, we sort of go in there, and you're sitting across the table, and they're suspicious that I'm just here to close everything down.

I'm here thinking they're not gonna trust me, they don't wanna... Maybe don't wanna listen to what I have to say about the red flags.

- Demian came and so he decided to have a meeting and he comes with a different approach to us.

He comes and said, "Listen, fisher guys from Riversdale, "we wanna work along with you."

- [Demian] What you start to realize is, fishermen are very interested in sharks and they know things about sharks I don't, and vice versa.

So, we started talking about the animals, talking about our lives, and over a period of time, a rapport builds, and so, I learned how much they make shark fishing every day.

And so I was able to find funding to sort of hire them to tag instead of kill.

And that arrangement has been fantastic.

- They come like, "You guys could still fish shark, "do some scientist research, and we'll meet in the middle."

To me, it was a good idea that he came to us like that, because, man, if it was something like, "You guys gotta stop fishing shark," then I would be like, "Man, how do you expect me "to feed my family?"

You know, I do this from my dad, my grandpa, this is something that went on from generation to generation here in Belize.

(dramatic music) - The way we work with the scientists, we have a good working relationship because it's both ways: we agree to some he says, he agrees to some we say, and it's not a one-way thing.

It's not like, "I'm the scientist, "you're gonna do this, this, this."

'Cause then that wouldn't work, right?

But a lot of scientists are like that.

They're like, "This is what you're gonna do."

And it won't work like that with fishermen 'cause we're self-employed.

We're used to being our own boss since day one.

- I think Belize needs more scientists like that, that would work directly with the fishers.

And I don't like the idea of just banning.

It's not just about the money or you say, "Well, I pay you to just quit fishing."

To me, I don't see it as fair 'cause it's our industry and it's our country, so, if you can work together, it's better, not only for me, for everyone.

(gentle music) - [Scientist] You just gotta go slow 'cause this is a really hard angle.

- [Narrator] After four years of working together, Demian's team and the Riversdale fishers are a smooth-running operation, conducting nighttime shark surveys on nearly pitch-black waters.

Once the long-lines they set earlier have had a chance to settle, the team returns to check the baited line for shark catches.

- [Demian] When we're fishing the long lines, we normally leave them for two hours, because we're trying to balance not spooking the sharks by driving around.

So, we wanna leave it so that they have time to get caught, but we don't wanna leave them on the hook too long because, you know, we wanna minimize the stress on the animal in general.

So, we try to check them as much as possible.

(dramatic music) (people murmuring) - [Narrator] When a shark is caught on the line, like this nurse shark, the team works swiftly to minimize injury to the animal and to themselves.

They use a tail rope to secure one end and hold the head firmly by the line where the hook has embedded itself in the mouth.

- [Demian] The sharks caught on the long line get caught in the lip because we use a special kind of a hook, called a circle hook, that is designed to get them that way.

Now, it's probably not pleasant for them to get hooked, but you have to keep in mind, these are animals that eat fish that are covered in spines, they eat stingrays that sting them in the mouth.

So, injuries around the mouth area heal very quickly.

So, it's not entirely stress free for them, but it's relatively painless.

- [Jessica] So, once we have the animal secured alongside the boat, we take some important body measurements.

Those measurements are useful because scientists take them uniformly.

So, if I take that measurement and I know a fellow colleague takes that measurement, I know it was taken in a very standardized way, and we can share information about the same species.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Researchers then record if the shark is male or female.

They also take a small skin clipping for genetics and make a simple piercing in the primary dorsal fin, where they attach a numbered tag.

Finally, after removing the hook from the mouth, the shark is released.

- [Jessica] So, most sharks need to swim to be able to breathe.

So, when we release it, we really wanna make sure the shark is oriented correctly and that it feels like it's swimming on its own, 'cause you can feel them kicking their tail.

Nurse sharks are able to breathe while they're just sitting on the bottom, but most of the sharks we handle aren't.

They do need to swim.

- [Narrator] When smaller individuals, like this newborn Caribbean reef shark, are caught, they are brought into the boat to complete the survey work-up.

- [Jessica] Some species that we catch are definitely more vulnerable to the stress of being caught and handled.

Caribbean reef sharks tend to be a little bit more delicate, especially the little ones, so, we wanna make sure that we're doing a workup pretty efficiently.

And if we do come across an animal, no matter what species it is, that is very weak, we won't do a workup, and we'll release that animal because it's not worth killing it to get the information.

- [Demian] There we go.

So, this is the belly button.

This is only a couple months old.

She was probably born late summer.

So, let's put him back in the water and get him out of here.

(scientist chuckles) Or her.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Working alongside the fishers from Riversdale has also revealed to researchers critical gaps in survey information, sometimes even the very presence of a particular shark species in a given region.

- The tiger shark for example, before they started working with us, they're like, "There's not tiger sharks in Belize.

"Belize doesn't have tiger sharks."

But that doesn't mean it's not in Belize.

It's just that they might not know where to catch that species.

And we, the fishermen, who's been doing it forever, knows where that species is.

- Tiger sharks are really difficult to get.

In fact, my fishing skills are nowhere near up to par.

I have to work with the shark fishermen.

And it turns out all of my survey gear, the baited cameras and the long lines, were all too shallow really to be catching tigers.

To get tigers, you have to go deep.

- When we do catch tiger sharks, we have access to a certain kind of satellite tags that are referred to as SPOT tags that go onto the first dorsal fin of the tiger shark.

The way that the SPOT tag operates is that, as soon as the dorsal fin of that individual breaks the surface of the water, it's going to emit a signal to satellites.

And that gives us an approximate location for the individual.

- The satellite tags are really a vital piece of information, 'cause the tiger sharks are quite different from the reef sharks or the nurse sharks.

'Cause those species, they'll stay in one location, so you can make a protected area and you're good to go.

With the tiger shark, they move around a lot.

Some of them have gone to the United States.

Some of them have gone to Cuba.

Several have gone to Honduras and Guatemala.

So, they travel, and that tells us that those are the countries that Belize needs to engage with in order to ensure that the tiger shark fishery maintains sustainability in the long term.

- [Narrator] Tiger sharks, as a fishery, make up a large volume of the regional shark meat trade, and, as such, can also have an impact on food security.

- [Devanshi] People depend on shark meat not just for livelihood in terms of income generation, but it is also a very important protein source for coastal communities globally.

So, it becomes even more important to sort of take a step back and look at the bigger picture in the sense of, you need more regional management of a fisheries as opposed to a more localized, domestic national management.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] This unique collaboration between scientists, fishers and managers is a shining example of how creating sustainable fisheries requires more than just sharing knowledge and gathering data.

It also entails a persistent effort to establish enduring trust and the courage to embrace different perspectives.

- My entire career in fisheries management, it was...

Always there's a discussion about how do we form that nexus between the science and the management part, or the science and the use part, and these groups of shark fishers in Belize and the researchers that they've been working with have actually formed that nexus.

That's not very common.

- I love working with the fishermen.

And what's really cool, and this survey is showing us, is we're seeing an increase in the reef sharks again.

So, they're rebounding back to the levels we used to see.

The conservation is actually leading to more sharks.

You know, it's nice to get a policy in place, and we can all celebrate, but to see something that's working and there's more sharks in the water is really gratifying, and it's great for everybody.

- You know, I appreciate a lot what they do for us.

And, you know, like what I tell Dr. Chapman, I love doing my work, and I love working with them, you know.

It's a good thing for our community, for our... You know, Riversdale here.

So, I told him, "Man, as long you guys keep this going, "I'm down for it."

- The collaboration with Dr. Chapman and his team is very important to us.

We are very proud to say that we are one of the leading countries in terms of shark management.

- In Belize, we're on the right track.

We feel very proud.

We're a country that we're using the resource, but we're using it responsibly.

And we're an example that it can be done responsibly.

And I think that our shark fishers are proud of it too, because they're central to all of this.

Most shark species are threatened, and we need more examples like what we're doing here.

And it's very good for us, coming from a small little country like Belize, to now be in a position to show the world how it should be done.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by the Batchelor Foundation, encouraging people to preserve and protect America's underwater resources.

Additional funding was provided by Trish and Dan Bell, and by the Parrot Family Endowment for Environmental Education.

(bright music)