Shark fisheries in Indonesia are an important economic resource in several areas. Hence, stronger regulations are needed to prevent declines in shark population.
Queensland can no longer cull sharks in protected areas of the Great Barrier Reef, but it’s time to move away from culls, nets and drumlines altogether. There are better ways to keep our beaches safe.
A camera catches a huge Greenland shark in eastern Baffin Bay, near Disko Bay, Greenland.
Jonathan Fisher
Media coverage of sharks often exaggerates risks to people, but more than 500 shark species have never been known to attack humans, and there’s lots to learn about them.
Though they’re protected worldwide, great white sharks encounter longline fishing vessels in half of their range.
Wildestanimal/Shutterstock
Even the remote open ocean offers no escape from industrial fishing for sharks.
A pair of blacktip reef shark neonates (Carcharhinus melanopterus) gently cruise among the roots in the mangrove forest of Surin Archipelago during high tide in Mu Koh Surin national park, Thailand.
Shin Arunrugstichai
Far more megafauna species use coastal wetlands than we thought. And it affects the way we need to address the extinction crisis.
Of more than 500 species of sharks in the world’s oceans, scientists have only sequenced a handful of genomes – most recently, white sharks.
Terry Goss/Wikimedia
Why do scientists spend so much time and money mapping the DNA of species like white sharks? Single studies may offer insights, but the real payoff comes in comparing many species to each other.
Some media have reported shark numbers at ‘plague proportions’ in Australian waters. But a new analysis suggests the opposite: species such as hammerheads and white sharks have plummeted in number.
Many of Australia’s beaches are now being monitored for shark safety by drones.
from www.shutterstock.com
The return of white sharks to Cape Cod, Massachusetts was a tourism success story – until a shark killed a swimmer. Can the Cape’s residents and visitors learn to share the ocean with these apex predators?
A fisherman holds up the saw of a sawfish caught in Madagascar. The species is dwindling along the coasts of Madagascar and Mozambique.
Ruth H. Leeney
Sharks have a PR problem. But new research shows that shark ecotourism programs boost people’s knowledge and attitudes towards shark conservation – even among those who are green-minded to begin with.
Marine Biologist, South African National Parks (SANParks); Honorary Research Associate, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity