by All the bodies of salt on Earth are one big ocean. But within it, there is endless variety – just ask any scuba diver. Some spots have more coral, more sea turtles, more fish, more life.
“I’ve dived in many places around the world, and there are few places like the Fuvahmulah Atoll in the Maldives,” Amanda Batlle-Morera, a research assistant with the Important Sharks and Ray Areas project, told me. “You can see tiger sharks, thresher sharks, scalloped hammerheads, oceanic manta rays and more, without throwing out bait to attract them.”
Identifying areas like Fuvahmulah that are particularly important to certain species is a long-standing strategy to protect threatened land animals, birds and marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins. Now our team of marine conservation scientists at the Sharks and Rays Critical Areas project are using it to help protect sharks and their loved ones.
I am a marine conservation biologist and the project’s communications officer. This initiative is working to identify areas of critical importance to sharks and rays, so that these zones can be marked for future protection or fisheries management measures.
Where are the sharks
Sharks and their relatives are some of the most endangered animals in the world: More than one third of the known species are threatened with extinction. Many of these animals play vital roles in their ecosystems. Losing marine predators can destabilize entire food webs and the ecosystems these food webs depend on.
In recent years, management of sharks and their relatives, rays and chimaeras, has focused heavily on limiting the impacts of fishing and trade on these species. But their populations are still rapidly declining, so new strategies are needed.
To effectively protect these important threatened animals, my colleagues and I believe that it is essential to identify and protect parts of the ocean, as well as some freshwater habitats, that are extremely important to their lives. Certain areas are important migration paths, for example, or feeding or mating grounds, or places to lay eggs.
Our team has created a list of technical criteria so that zones around the world can be examined and potentially designated as Important Shark and Ray Areas. We modeled these criteria on similar types of approaches already in use, such as marine mammal important areas, which we adapted to the specific needs and biology of sharks and their relatives.
We are now hosting a series of 13 regional workshops around the world and inviting local experts to nominate preliminary areas of interest for evaluation by our team and an independent expert review panel. To date, we have completed three workshops, one focusing on the Central and South American Pacific, another on the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and the third on the Western Indian Ocean, and a workshop for Facility planned for early 2024.
Following the workshops and expert reviews, each of the Important Shark and Steam Areas will be added to our e-atlas, which can be viewed online. Each region’s Important Shark and Ray Areas are published as a formal summary, and the entire global process will be repeated every 10 years. This cycle will allow us to look at changes in areas that have already been mapped, such as new fisheries policies or impacts from climate change, and take into account new research that will help us identify new areas.
To inform conservation policies
We recently published our summary of the Mediterranean and Black Sea region, which reflects input from over 180 experts across the region. It identifies 65 Important Shark and Ray Areas that range in size and habitat type. Our summary includes over 125 areas in the Western Indian Ocean.
These zones are important for species such as the critically endangered black-chinned guitar (Glaucostegus cemiculus), as well as highly fished shark species such as the common thresher shark (Mustelus mustelus).
Some of these areas, such as Benidorm Island off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, are in shallow coastal zones. Others, like the Cocos-Galapagos Passage off Costa Rica and Ecuador, go into deep ocean waters.
The smallest area identified so far, Israel’s Palmahim salt pools in the southeastern Mediterranean, is only 0.03 square miles (0.09 square kilometers) – about half the size of New York City’s Grand Central station. Blackmouth Shark (Galeus melastomus) breed and lay eggs there, and threatened rough-angled sharks (Oxynotus centrina) feed there, including on black mouth catshark eggs.
The largest area is the Strait of Sicily and the Tunisian Plateau, which stretches over 77,000 square miles (200,000 square kilometers) – about the size of Great Britain – in the Mediterranean between Sicily, Malta, western Libya and Tunisia. This zone supports at least 32 species of sharks, rays and chimaeras, including many that are threatened with extinction, in habitats ranging from shallow sea beds to deep ocean trenches.
The identification of a location as an Important Shark and Ray Area does not automatically mean that it will be protected. Our goal is to inform the countries’ current spatial planning and fisheries management processes and other conservation planning. Eventually, these zones may be incorporated into marine protected areas or other forms of ocean conservation.
Sharks and their relatives need human help to survive and maintain their important biological roles in the ocean. Through the Sharks and Rays Important Areas project, hundreds of scientists and other experts are helping to identify special places for these species that we believe need extra attention.
Dr. Rima Jabado, chair of the Shark Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, with this article.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.
It was written by: David Shiffman, Arizona State University.
Read more:
David Shiffman does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article this, and has not disclosed any relevant connections beyond their academic appointment.
