FEATURE SAVING SHARKS
By: Randall Arauz, Fins Attached Marine Research and Conservation International^
Marine Conservation Policy AdvisorSaving the Sharks of the
Shark Triangle
Few places on Earth rival the
spectacular biodiversity and
abundance of highly migratory marine
megafauna of the Eastern Tropical
Pacific. For quite a while now, it
has been known that these highly
migratory species are not randomly
distributed throughout the ocean, but
rather, form aggregations at three
specific oceanic islands during their
adult life stage: Cocos Island, Costa
Rica; Malpelo Island, Colombia;
and Galápagos Islands, Ecuador.
Parades of silky sharks and Galápagos
sharks, aggregations of hundreds of
hammerhead sharks, whale sharks,
and tiger sharks are all common
inhabitants of these remote islands
that form the Shark Triangle.
Unfortunately, shark aggregations
are no secret to fishers who target
them at these sites because of the high
price their fins fetch in the international
shark fin trade. Eastern Tropical Pacific
shark populations have declined over
90 percent due to the overfishing fortheir fins, and sharks are not alone.
Other highly migratory species like sea
turtles that share the same biological
traits as sharks, including being
long-lived, maturing later in life, and
producing few offspring, are caught
under the guise of by-catch and
suffer the same detrimental impacts
due to their vulnerability to fisheries-
induced mortality.
Acknowledging the importance of
protecting these sites from overfishing,
the governments of Costa Rica,
Colombia and Ecuador declared them
national parks with respective no-take
fishing zones. To further support these
conservation efforts on an international
diplomatic scale, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) declared the
three islands as World Heritage Sites.
Since 2005, Migramar, a coalition of
shark research institutions including
non-government organisations and
academia, has been generating the
needed science in the Eastern Tropical