Last modified on Sun 31 Jan 2021 01.11 EST
About four years ago, Colin Simpfendorfer was diving on reefs in Indonesia’s picture-perfect Raja Ampat region when he noticed the distinct absence of something.
“It’s a beautiful place to dive. We would have expected to see grey reef sharks and white tips,” says the veteran scientist. “But you don’t see sharks for days on end.”
Simpfendorfer, an adjunct professor at Queensland’s James Cook University and a global authority on sharks and rays, has been researching the marine animals since the mid-1980s.
Last week, a global team of shark researchers, including Simpfendorfer, found sharks and rays that live in the open ocean have been dwindling at an alarming rate.