The boats cited in the article using these longlines work hundreds of miles south of the UK down in the of Bay of Biscay...
one of the last boats to target sharks with longlines in UK waters off Cornwall was a small French boat from the Ile d'Yeu in 1983. While no one can argue with the physiology of sexual reproduction in blue sharks to draw a correlation between the number of boats fishing in Looe today and the number of sharks being landed is a tad simplistic - you could argue the same for conger eel landings in Newlyn as was mentioned with regard to the recent postage stamps issue - the simple fact is that there are no longline boats fishing for conger eel any more - all the boats now use gill nets which do not catch conger eels at all - they don't have gills for starters!
From any other events positive correlations can be drawn - equally erroneous - here are a few examples of how correlation is not necessarily causation!
