Article body copy
Between June and December 2017 alone, eight fishermen operating out of Isla San Esteban, Mexico, illegally caught and killed as many as 14 great white sharks. Plying the waters of the Gulf of California in small boats known as
pangas, they hunted down the enormous fish, hauled them to remote beaches, and dismembered them. To conceal their activity, they mixed the flesh in with their legal catch. From each shark the fishermen kept a tooth. From one, they extracted a full set of jaws.
Marine biologist Daniel J. Madigan, now with the University of Windsor in Ontario, was setting up a research project in the area at the time. While interviewing fishermen about their practices and the species they encountered, he heard rumors of shark poaching.
Last modified on Sun 31 Jan 2021 01.11 EST
About four years ago, Colin Simpfendorfer was diving on reefs in Indonesia’s picture-perfect Raja Ampat region when he noticed the distinct absence of something.
“It’s a beautiful place to dive. We would have expected to see grey reef sharks and white tips,” says the veteran scientist. “But you don’t see sharks for days on end.”
Simpfendorfer, an adjunct professor at Queensland’s James Cook University and a global authority on sharks and rays, has been researching the marine animals since the mid-1980s.
Last week, a global team of shark researchers, including Simpfendorfer, found sharks and rays that live in the open ocean have been dwindling at an alarming rate.