A team spanning 15 countries is raising endangered zebra sharks in captivity and reintroducing them to the wild—attempting to bring back a self-sustaining population that has been teetering on extinction
, for example, gathers eggs from dead sharks sold in fish markets and rears and releases their hatchlings into the Mediterranean Sea. But these efforts, though well-intentioned, are tiny in scope and often don’t even involve threatened species. There’s little evidence they’ll drive population-level improvements—in part because they often skirt the thorniest issue: Until overfishing is stopped where sharks are released, adding more won’t bring species back.
That’s why Dulvy initially was skeptical of ReShark’s plans. The Simon Fraser University ecologist had seen it all. “I was getting jaded by these hopeful but useless projects,” Dulvy told me. So he asked tough questions—and came away surprised. “This initiative is different.”, agreed. It's the first shark reintroduction project she’s come across that “may provide an opportunity for species not to go extinct,” she said.
That’s because Charlie and Kathlyn were starting their new lives in a place now off-limits to shark fishing. Cardinal fish and glassy sweepers pulse and swirl around a sea fan draped in crinoids beneath a coral ledge in the Wayag Islands. Raja Ampat is home to some 1,600 species of fish and more than three-quarters of the world’s coral species, and Wayag is among its most spectacular regions.The Wayag Islands in northern Raja Ampat are a labyrinth of sandy beaches and turquoise lagoons and atolls broken by limestone towers.
Sharks here, like many other places, had been culled over decades. By the 1990s, few remained. By the mid-2000s, though, the region had adopted nine marine protected areas covering a region half the size of Switzerland—some 8,000 square miles. Soon fishing for sharks and rays was banned outright across an even bigger area. Enforcement patrols regularly hunted for illegal fishing nets and boats. By 2012 shark populationsBut not zebra sharks.
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