many consist of a mix of various species. This shark is caught most readily on longlines, but is also susceptible to gillnets, driftnets, trawls, and handlines. It is valuable enough to be generally retained when caught as bycatch; if storage space cannot be spared, it may be finned and the carcass discarded. Intensive fishing for the porbeagle dates back the 1930s, when Norway and to a lesser extent Denmark began operating longline vessels in the Northeast Atlantic. The Norwegian annual catch rose from 279 tons in 1926 to 3,884 tons in 1933, and peaked at around 6,000 tons in 1947, with the resumption of fishing after World War II. Soon after, the stock collapsed; Norwegian annual catches declined steadily to 1,200–1,900 tons from 1953 to 1960, 160–300 tons in the early 1970s, and 10–40 tons in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Similarly, Danish annual catches fell from 1,500 tons in the early 1950s to under 100 tons in the 1990s. France and Spain began to target porbeagles in the Northeast Atlantic in the 1970s. French fishers operate mainly in the Celtic Sea and the Bay of Biscay, and saw a decline from an annual catch over 1,000 tons in 1979 to 300–400 tons in the late 1990s. Catches by Spanish fishers were highly variable, ranging from negligible to over 4,000 tons per year, which may reflect shifts of fishing effort into historically less-exploited waters. Since 2011, all fishing for the porbeagle has been illegal in waters of the European Union, and EU-registered vessels are also prohibited from fishing for the species in international waters. In 2012, similar restriction came into effect in Norway. As porbeagles had become scarce in the Northeast Atlantic, in the 1960s, the Norwegian fishing fleet moved west to the waters off New England and Newfoundland. A few years later, they were joined by longline vessels from the Faroe Islands. Norwegian annual catches rose from 1,900 tons in 1961 to over 9,000 tons in 1965; the catch was largely exported to Italy, where porbeagle (smeriglio) is an extremely popular food fish. Again, the stock collapsed, this time in only six years; by 1970, Norwegian catches had fallen under 1,000 tons per year, and Faroese catches observed a similar trend. With the population decimated, most fishers moved on or switched to other species. Porbeagle numbers gradually recovered in the ensuing 25 years, to about 30% of pre-exploitation