Shortly after 12.45pm, what remains of a 300-metre line goes taut. Somewhere beneath the murky green surface of Delaware Bay, on the eastern US coast, a sand tiger shark has taken the bait of a mackerel chunk. Marine researchers at the University of Delaware haul the line towards a small boat as the shark’s grey-brown outline emerges.
It is a large animal: 225cm (7ft) long with a 90cm girth. Its mouth hangs open, revealing rows of jagged teeth. The researchers work quickly, measuring the shark, recording its sex, and taking blood and muscle samples. A tag is then fastened beneath its dorsal fin, through its thick sandpapery skin.
The mature male seems to watch them as they work. Then it is lowered back into the bay. With a powerful flick of its tail, it disappears almost as quickly as it arrived.
Several thousand miles away, sand tiger sharks collected from these same waters circle tanks in Abu Dhabi, moving among artificial reefs and through blue-lit tunnels in the desert city’s aquariums, where visitors pay up to $100 (£75) for day passes. They will never return to Delaware Bay.
Tagging sand tigers – a species of concern that is prohibited from being caught in US waters – offers clues about the lives of these fish, which are critically endangered globally.
However, in recent years, the bay – a US habitat of particular concern between the states of Delaware and New Jersey – has become a hotspot for private collection of specimens for the global aquarium trade.
A recent study by marine researchers from the University of Delaware, Delaware State University and the University of Rhode Island shows that, since 2018, the number of sand tiger sharks collected from Delaware Bay for public display has risen sharply, from two that year to 40 in 2023. In total, 80 of the sharks were taken from Delaware waters for aquariums between 2018 and 2024.
The US has spent decades restricting the killing of sand tiger sharks, yet in recent years, through a regulatory maze of federal and state permits, private collecting companies can legally remove these protected sharks from the wild for public display. A shark that an angler would be required to release after catching can instead be transported thousands of miles and placed in a foreign aquarium, with private companies profiting from the trade.
“How can we say these people [private collectors] can remove them and functionally harvest them, whereas these ones [recreational anglers] can’t?” says Aaron Carlisle, an associate professor from the University of Delaware’s school of marine science and another of the study’s authors. “If our concern is sustainability, we need to know what is the impact of removal.”
How, indeed? Memo to the Delaware and New Jersey legislatures and their Congressional delegations–make this stop!
Superior Court Judge Sheldon K. Rennie made his first decision on a taxpayer lawsuit against the Diamond State Port Corporation, which was filed in July.
The case is still in early stages, and the Thursday hearing was largely procedural.
It focused on a difference in opinion between the two parties. Rennie granted the DSPC’s request to stay discovery on subpoenas filed on behalf of taxpayers suing the public private partnership managing the Port of Wilmington and its Edgemoor expansion.
The subpoenas are to third parties. One asks the State Auditor’s office to share “any and all communications” concerning the DSPC, Gulftainer USA, and Enstructure gathered during its 2025 audit of the port corporation.
The plaintiffs also sought bank statements, loan applications, wire transfers, financing documents related to a $350 million credit line the DSPC’s former port partner Gulftainer obtained through banks. Rennie stayed discovery for those three bank subpoenas too.
Legal representation for DSPC from Barnes & Thornburg argued the case is in its very early stages, and it’s filed a motion to dismiss. It argued that carrying out discovery with third parties before a decision on the case’s validity is made could pose an undue burden.
Barnes & Thornburg’s home office is in Indiana. I’ve long wondered why they toss around so many $600 checks to Delaware legislators. I wonder no more.
The Trump administration has asked a federal court to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent narrowly loses, a highly unusual move that signaled an effort to potentially intervene in the outcome.
President Trump made clear on Friday that he had demanded the lawsuit, acknowledging how directly he has harnessed the Justice Department to carry out his wishes. “I’m the one that said do it,” he told reporters.
The Justice Department, in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Alaska on Thursday, argued that confusion over a candidate on the ballot with a name very similar to that of the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, could taint the election result.
In other words, the Department of Justice is no longer the Department of Justice. Gee, has that story been…under-played?
What do you want to talk about?
My kind of morning–the Claymont Lions’ Club breakfast (yes, as always, Shay Frisby was a volunteer), then over to the Claymont Community Center to vote.
Polls weren’t busy, plenty of parking, good day to vote early.