Martin Strmiska / Alamy
Numbers of oceanic sharks and rays have declined at what researchers describe as an “alarming” 71 per cent over almost half a century, leading to what researchers say is an unprecedented increase in risk of extinction.
Conservationists have been warning for years about the unsustainable killing of the apex predators, based on regional reports and data on individual species, but a paper published today is the first to offer an authoritative global overview.
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It focuses on oceanic sharks and rays – those that live in open seas rather than in shallow coastal waters – and reveals that shark finning and fishing worldwide have driven a decline in numbers of at least 71 per cent between 1970 and 2018. Prior research has shown that coastal shark populations are declining too. “Policy-makers can no longer ignore the plight of sharks and rays,” says Nathan Pacoureau at Simon Fraser University, Canada, who worked on the study.