The results of the 2017 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Regional Red List assessment of 153 species of chondrichthyan fish (sharks, rays, and chimaeras) indicates that the Arabian Sea and its adjacent waters are home to some of the most threatened in the world.
The IUCN Red List is widely recognised as the most comprehensive, objective global approach for evaluating the conservation status of plant and animal species.
The assessment was part of the final result of the workshop and research that began in February, 2017, which was organised by the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD) to evaluate the extinction risk status of sharks, rays, and chimaeras found in the Arabian Sea and its adjacent waters, the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Arabian Gulf.
Urgent action is required to conserve populations and habitats, as more than half of the species (78) are considered threatened with an elevated risk of extinction within the region. A further 27 species were assessed as being close to entering a threatened category in the near future. Only 19 species were assessed as being in a healthy state. For 29 species, there was insufficient scientific information to evaluate their risk of extinction, highlighting the need for more work to understand the status of these species.
Overfishing was considered the main cause of threat due to both targeted and incidental capture.
"Sharks, rays and chimaeras tend to reproduce and grow slowly, which leaves them particularly vulnerable to overfishing", said Dr. Peter Kyne, Senior Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University and Red List Authority for the IUCN SSG. Some of the families with the highest numbers of threatened species, include sawfish, hammerhead sharks, wedgefish, guitarfish, and eagle rays which all have low life expectancies.