Shark catastrophe points to failure to enact global biodiversity agreements by Anna Nordseth on 19 April 2021 A high-profile study published in Nature found a 70% decline in shark and ray populations over the last half century. Like many other taxonomic groups, shark and ray declines are driven by human actions — in this case, overfishing by commercial fisheries. Experts are calling for a retention ban by the EU to prevent to collapse of threatened shark populations. A near-sharkless open ocean could soon be a reality, according to Nathan Pacoureau, a postdoctoral researcher in the Earth to Ocean Research Group at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Pacoureau and an international research team recently detected a 70% decline in shark and ray populations over the last 50 years. This study, published in