SANTA CRUZ -- Northern California environmentalists are teaming up to ask the state and federal government to step up protections for great white sharks, seeking to have them declared an endangered species deserving of the highest level of regulatory safeguards.
The request was filed Friday with the federal National Marine Fisheries Service by Monterey-based Oceana and the San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity. If the federal agency decides to take up the petition, a decision would take more than a year.
"Our end goal is both the federal and state government listing the U.S. West Coast population of great white sharks as endangered," said Ashley Blacow, a spokeswoman for Oceana, saying the groups are seeking added conservation measures, particularly when it comes to drift net and gill net fisheries.
