A newly released peer-reviewed paper in Frontiers in Marine Science emphasises that establishing measures to address the global decline in Chondrichthyes is more urgent than ever. The paper, “Putting sharks on the map: a global standard for improving shark area-based conservation,” outlines a set of standardized criteria for Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) that can support management considerations to reverse the loss of sharks globally and integrate these into area-based planning.
«Generally sharks, rays and chimaeras are long-lived, take a long time to reach maturity, are slow to reproduce and, when they do, produce few young. These characteristics make them extremely vulnerable to overfishing and other human-induced impacts, like climate change and habitat degradation. It is crucial that we find new and effective ways to protect these species before it’s too late.»
The IUCN Species Survival Commission Shark Specialist Group, with support from the IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme and the IUCN Task Force on Marine Mammal Protected Areas, is engaged in an effort to develop an expert-driven innovative approach to ensure that discrete portions of habitats, critical to shark species — Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRA) — are delineated and used in various place-based conservation and management initiatives across the world’s ocean.
An article introducing the Important Shark and Ray Areas was featured in the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative (GOBI) latest newsletter. The article highlights the need for this new tool to delineate those areas most important to the persistence of sharks and how it can contribute to improved spatial planning.
