In recent years, governments around the world have rallied to save sharks. Many of the top ocean predators are at risk vanishing for good from the oceans because of overfishing.
But a new study has come to a troubling conclusion: Many of those efforts aren’t doing enough to stop sharks from dying.
Between 2012 and 2019, the number of sharks killed by fishing increased from at least 76 million a year to 80 million even as regulations were being put in place, a finding that is likely to stoke fears about the loss of an apex fish that is vital to the health of marine ecosystems on which millions of people depend for food.
“They are a canary in the coal mine,” said Darcy Bradley, an ocean scientist at the nonprofit Nature Conservancy and adjunct faculty at the University of California at Santa Barbara who co-wrote the study published Thursday in the journal Science.
“They are an indicator species that’s going to let us know if something is problematic within our ecosystems,” she added.
The good news, according to the researchers, is that they have spotted some regulations that do work to protect the top predators. But time is running out to implement them given that [a third ](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221011982)of all sharks, rays and related species are at risk of extinction.
“We’re glad we’re finding this out now because sharks don’t have much time.” said Boris Worm, a conservation biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada who co-wrote the study.
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In recent years, governments around the world have rallied to save sharks. Many of the top ocean predators are at risk vanishing for good from the oceans because of overfishing.
But a new study has come to a troubling conclusion: Many of those efforts aren’t doing enough to stop sharks from dying.
Between 2012 and 2019, the number of sharks killed by fishing increased from at least 76 million a year to 80 million even as regulations were being put in place, a finding that is likely to stoke fears about the loss of an apex fish that is vital to the health of marine ecosystems on which millions of people depend for food.
“They are a canary in the coal mine,” said Darcy Bradley, an ocean scientist at the nonprofit Nature Conservancy and adjunct faculty at the University of California at Santa Barbara who co-wrote the study published Thursday in the journal Science.
“They are an indicator species that’s going to let us know if something is problematic within our ecosystems,” she added.
The good news, according to the researchers, is that they have spotted some regulations that do work to protect the top predators. But time is running out to implement them given that [a third ](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221011982)of all sharks, rays and related species are at risk of extinction.
“We’re glad we’re finding this out now because sharks don’t have much time.” said Boris Worm, a conservation biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada who co-wrote the study.
**Read more:** [**https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/11/shark-finning-study/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/11/shark-finning-study/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)