Sharks can be very difficult to study. They’re always moving. Their habitats are not readily accessible. When they are fished, it can be difficult to identify from which species the meat or fins came, but it’s been proven endangered species are ending up in the markets. Little evidence existed of what was happening in the oceans. Global FinPrint is changing that. This summer, the global network of scientists published their first set of findings from the three-year survey.
And the news is not good. The scientists discovered sharks are functionally extinct along 20 percent of the 371 reefs they studied, meaning there are so few that they no longer fulfill their role in those ecosystems. Near reefs along the Dominican Republic, French West Indies, Kenya, Vietnam, the Windward Dutch Antilles and Qatar, sharks appeared all but gone with a combined total of three sharks were observed during more than 800 hours of video footage.
“While Global FinPrint results exposed a tragic loss of sharks from many of the world’s reefs, it also shows us signs of hope,” said Jody Allen, co-founder and chairwoman of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. “The data collected from the first-ever worldwide survey of sharks on coral reefs can guide meaningful, long-term conservation plans for protecting the reef sharks that remain.”
The study identified areas where conservation strategies are working including Australia, the Bahamas, the Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, the Maldives and the United States. These areas provide a clear picture of what needs to be done for recovery elsewhere.
“We found that robust shark populations can exist alongside people when those people have the will, the means and a plan to take conservation action,”
said Chapman, an associate professor in FIU’s Department of Biological Sciences and a researcher in the Institute of Environment.
The research also identifies the primary culprits of reef shark population declines — among them overfishing and poor fishing practices— and long-term implications for protecting and rebuilding reef shark populations all across the world. The researchers suggest a variety of options to help governments, fisheries and others reverse the population declines including restricting certain fishing gear such as gillnets, setting catch limits and, in places experiencing catastrophic declines, instituting nationwide bans on shark and ray fishing as well as trade.
Global FinPrint research is being conducted by hundreds of scientists, researchers and conservationists, among them citizen sicentists, organized by lead collaborators from Florida International University, Dalhousie University in Canada, Curtin and James Cook universities in Australia and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
