Cassandra Rigby

Cassie has extensive experience in shark fisheries, research, conservation and management (>25 years) with a focus in recent years on CITES, IUCN Red List assessments, and global and Pacific shark conservation. Cassie is currently the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group SSG Red List Authority Coordinator, co-ordinating and drafting global Red List assessments. Since her PhD, on deepwater chondrichthyans life history, Cassie has been actively engaged in shark conservation issues, contributing to ecological risk assessments of South Pacific and South Indian Ocean deepwater sharks to high seas fishing, compiling risk summaries of all Australian sharks and rays, developing WWF tools to improve shark management (the Rapid Assessment Toolkit and the Shark and Ray MPA Guide), and producing a Preliminary Recovery Plan for Scalloped Hammerheads in the Indian Ocean. Cassie has trained Pacific countries and Indonesia to undertake Non-Detriment Findings (NDF) of CITES listed sharks and rays, and has prepared NDFs for Australian recently listed CITES species which were listed at the 2022 CITES Conference of the Parties, where Cassie was the SSG CITES representative providing scientific advice on carcharhinid, guitarfishes and hammerhead listing proposals to governments, NGOs and Parties.