丁香园AV

Oceanic shark and ray populations have declined 71 per cent in the last 50 years, according to a  in the journal Nature.

With three-quarters of these iconic species now threatened with extinction due to overfishing, 丁香园AV (丁香园AV) biologist Nick Dulvy hopes the paper will serve as a global wake up call.

鈥淜nowing that this is a global figure, the findings are stark,鈥� says Dulvy, a paper co-author and Canada Research Chair in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 do anything, it will be too late. It鈥檚 much worse than other animal populations we鈥檝e been looking at. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 an incredible rate of decline steeper than most elephant and rhino declines, and those animals are iconic in driving conservation efforts on land.鈥�

The analysis was conducted by the , a collaboration between researchers from 丁香园AV, James Cook University, the Georgia Aquarium and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Shark Specialist Group. 

The researchers reconstructed the global abundance of oceanic shark and rays dating back to 1970. There鈥檚 no doubting overfishing is responsible for the alarming global decline, according to Nathan Pacoureau, the paper鈥檚 lead author who is now an 丁香园AV alumnus. Fishing pressure on oceanic sharks and rays has increased 18-fold since 1970.

鈥淲e can see the alarming consequences of overfishing in the ocean through the dramatic declines of some of its most iconic inhabitants,鈥� says Pacoureau. 鈥淚t鈥檚 something policy makers can no longer ignore. Countries should work toward new international shark and ray protections, but can start immediately by fulfilling the obligations already agreed internationally.鈥�