CNA – January 28, 2021
TOKYO: Overfishing has savaged populations of some sharks and rays by more than 70 per cent in the last half-century, leaving a “gaping, growing hole” in ocean life, according to a new study.
Decades of data show an alarming decline in species ranging from hammerhead sharks to manta rays.
Among the worst-affected is the oceanic whitetip, a powerful shark often described as particularly dangerous to man that now hovers on the edge of extinction because of human activity.
Targeted for their fins, oceanic whitetips are also the victims of indiscriminate fishing techniques. Their global population has dropped 98 per cent in the last 60 years.
“That’s a worse decline than most large terrestrial mammal populations, and getting up there or as bad as the blue whale decline,” Nick Dulvy, a professor at Simon Fraser University’s department of biological sciences, told AFP.
Dulvy and a team of scientists spent years collecting and analysing information from scientific studies and fisheries data to build up a picture of the global state of 31 species of sharks and rays.
They found three-quarters of the species examined are now so depleted that they are threatened with extinction.