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1 Newsletter of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG) #1/20212 Our Vision A world where sharks, rays, and chimaeras are valued and managed sustainably. Our Mission To secure the conservation, management and, where necessary, the recovery of the world’s sharks, rays, and chimaeras by mobilizing tech- nical and scientific expertise to provide the knowledge that enables action. Photo by Michael Scholl | Save Our Seas FoundationJuvenile Lemon Sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) in Bimini, The Bahamas caught by the Bimini Biological Field Station (BBFS) during their long-term annual PIT program in 2019 Cover photos by Michael Scholl | Save Our Seas Foundation 3 4 Editorial: A note from the Chair 5 Meet the SSG’s new Chair: Rima Jabado 9 The Co-Chairs’ view of a decade of shark conservation 12 Thank you note to all Regional Vice-Chairs stepping down 15 A welcome note to all the new Regional Vice- Chairs 18 Regional Vice- Chairs 2021-2024 19 Working Groups 24 John ‘Jack’ A. Musick 28 Curious about what shark species occur in South Africa? 30 Putting a face to a name 32 Founding MISS 36 Recently published 38 The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Sharks 40 The Bareback Guitarfish 41 Safe havens for sawfishes 56 Research for conservation and management 58 Pakistan – sawfish status and update 60 Report on the meeting of the Working Group on Recreational Fishing 61 Update from the IUCN SSG Africa Region 63 Contribution of the Russian SSG team 65 Upcoming meetings 2021 66 Funding opportunities Photo by Michael Scholl | Save Our Seas Foundation All content, information, text, materials, names, images, illustrations and visual rep- resentations (including, without limitation, from our members, partners, affiliates, contractors, employees and representatives) appearing on our website (iucnssg.org), in our publica- tions (e.g. Shark News) or made available by us in any format (“Content”) is protected by intellectual property (“IP”) laws and may not be used, republished, retransmitted, reproduced, downloaded or otherwise used (except for downloading for private and non-commercial use) without the express written consent of the Chair of the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group (SSG), author or copyright holder. This IP also extends to all trademarks appearing on the site, including the IUCN SSC SSG logo. The Content remains the exclusive property and copyright of the text authors, photographers, and illustrators in their respective credits or captions. Editor-in-chief Michael Scholl Chief Editor Rima Jabado Associate Editor Michelle Scott Contributing Editor Jasmin Graham Chelsea Stein Proofreader Michael Scholl Rima Jabado Michelle Scott Design & art direction Peter Scholl scholldesign.com Published by the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group (SSG) P.O. Box 29588 | Dubai United Arab Emirates4 Dear readers, Welcome to the first quarterly issue of Shark News of 2021, the official IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Shark Specialist Group (SSG) newsletter! My first interaction with the SSG was in 2010 in Galway, Ireland, where the European Elasmobranch Association (EEA) meeting took place. My PhD supervisor, Dr. Aaron Henderson, suggested that I attend the conference and present my preliminary results investigating the shark fisheries in the United Arab Emirates. Back then, few researchers were involved in shark science in the Arabian Peninsula, and I often felt very isolated when it came to in- teracting with researchers doing similar work. Little did I know that there was a huge community of scientists with similar stories and struggles work- ing worldwide. A community of scientists, researchers, and policy makers zealously working together to conserve sharks, rays, and chimaeras through the SSG and beyond.We are a growing community with over 240 mem- bers from 86 countries and territories but still a small one relative to groups worldwide that work on conserving other marine megafauna like sea turtles or cetaceans. But our group of volunteers has been incredibly productive, and so much has been accomplished in the last 30 years of the SSG. This year, I was honored to have been appointed as Chair of the SSG, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to serve and lead this group into the next quadrennium and fourth decade. I am proud of what this community represents and excited to continue being part of it and work with so many passionate and committed individuals in the fields of research, conservation, and education. This first issue of the newsletter focuses on acknowledging the work accomplished by previous leaders and members while introducing the new SSG team and structure. We also have a feature story on sawfishes showcasing what scien- tists are doing to conserve one of the last remaining populations off Florida in the United States. Despite the many twists and turns the global pandemic has thrown at us all, it is clear that there is still some incredible research and conservation work taking place around the world. We also take a closer look at some of the work members are doing across the Mediterranean Sea, Paki- stan, Sri Lanka, and Russia. Shark News was the official SSG newsletter from June 1994 to October 2004. It was a testament to Sarah Fowler’s, one of the founding members of the SSG and former Chair, dedication and passion for sharks. We have decided to revive it to provide a forum for the exchange of information on all aspects of shark, ray, and chimaera conservation matters for SSG members and the general interested audience. This would not have been possible without Michael Scholl’s support, who is now the Chair of the Communication Working Group, and I can’t thank him enough for his efforts so far! I hope that through this newsletter, we can showcase the incredi- ble stories, successes, and projects that the SSG community is involved in. I would like to see this newsletter grow, to be shaped by your stories. I hope that you will all contribute so future generations of scientists, conserva- tionists, and educators worldwide can hear about the fantastic work you are doing and be inspired. Rima A note from the Chair5 Meet the SSG’s new Chair: Rima Jabado Rima brings a passionate energy and vision that will lead the group for the next 4 years. By Chelsea Stein, contributor Photo by Elasmo Project | elasmoproject.com6 “I like to be ambitious, so I have a lot of things that I would like to accomplish, and I’ll only be able to do this because of the legacy of others before me and the dedication of our mem- bers, partners, donors, and really the whole shark commu- nity,” said Dr. Rima Jabado, founder and lead scientist of The Elasmo Project and the IUCN Species Survival Commission Shark Specialist Group’s (SSG) newest Chair. Rima has spent over 17 years developing and working on conservation initiatives around the world. She has visited more than 80 countries – including the Bahamas, South Africa, U.S., Australia, and India – and is currently working to make a dif- ference for elasmobranchs – a group of cartilaginous fish that includes sharks, rays, and chimaeras – in many others. Rima’s passion for sharks has been shown in over 45 scien- tific, technical, and popular publications, and in various local and international media outlets including National Geographic, BBC, and Scientific American. She published a book on marine ecosystems in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an identifi- cation guide for sharks in the Arabian Seas Region, an IUCN report on the conservation status of sharks, rays, and chimae- ras in the Arabian Sea and adjacent waters, and an identifica- tion guide to wedgefishes and giant guitarfishes. In addition, she is a member of the IUCN Marine Conservation Committee, sits on the Advisory Committee for the Convention on Migratory Species Sharks MoU as a representative of the Asia region, and was recently appointed as Scientific Coun- cilor (Fish) at the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. Now, as she embarks on her four-year term as Chair of the SSG, she is bringing a passionate energy and vision to build upon what the group has accomplished in its 30-year history to date. She is looking forward to expanding the work of the SSG and creating a foundation for the group to continue mak- ing a difference for years to come. “I would like to leave a legacy,” she said. “What I want to have accomplished in these four years is to have a framework in place so that the SSG is clear on what needs to be done in terms of shark conservation, what the priorities are and how they should be accomplished.” From seeing a fish out of water to finding a passion Growing up in Greece, Rima was always near the water and was obsessed with sharks from a young age. But as it turns out, her first encounter was seeing a fish out of water at a market. “I knew of sharks because of Jaws as cliché as it sounds,” she said. “I remember seeing just a head – and now, I know that it was a six-gill shark – but it was just a head on ice at the market and I thought, ‘This looks nothing like Jaws!’” She was hooked – from that day, Rima was interested in sharks and would read anything she could get her hands on to learn more. She knew that if she wanted to make a difference for them as a species, she had to understand policy. “I didn’t start my career as a shark scientist. I did my bach- elor’s in political science and earned a few graduate diplomas to understand more for what needs to be done in communica- tion and messaging.” While earning her degree, Rima volunteered for various marine projects, including studying dolphins in the U.S. and great white sharks in South Africa, which led her to realize that applying hands-on work and science to help enact policy was her passion. “When I finally decided to jump into the science of it, I tried to work at this interface where I was collecting data and doing research but at the same time making it accessible to deci- sion-makers,” she said. “Whatever information I was collecting was framed in a way that could support the key management measures that were needed in the specific countries where I was working.” Two degrees later – a Master of Applied Sciences in Natural Resource Management and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Ecology – Rima made waves to help sharks in the UAE, the fourth-largest exporter of shark fins in the world. Here, she conducted the first long-term study of sharks and rays in the northwest Indian Ocean, helped to enact various legislations to protect shark species, facilitated a seasonal ban on the fishing of sharks during periods of high reproduc- tion, and assisted in developing a national plan of action with the government. Photo by Daniel Fernando7 During her Ph.D., Rima founded The Elasmo Project in 2010, to dedicate efforts to understand shark and ray species, abun- dance and distribution in the Arabian Sea and adjacent waters, a largely understudied region of the world. Over the years, this mission has expanded to include 14 projects across 8 countries, working directly with fisheries stakeholders and governments to inform policy at regional, national, and international levels. “The work we’ve done as partners, nonprofit organizations, donors, and governments in the last 10 years has been incred- ible – and it’s been such a team effort,” Rima said. “It’s really putting sharks on the agenda; it was needed for such a long time and it’s finally happening.” Beyond translating her scientific work into real, actionable knowledge and materials for legislation, Rima deeply enjoys being able to work with the younger generation of scientists, hoping to inspire them to follow their passions too. Under her direction, The Elasmo Project’s initiatives are led by local students or early career scientists to ensure capacity building and knowledge transfer. “It’s great being able to have students working in remote areas and finally answering questions about areas that no one has worked in or no one knows about,” she said. “I work with so many students who are excited about sharks, which makes me excited too, and I want to help get them started in this field because it’s not an easy field to work in. I just hope that I can get them to make it their future career too.” Involvement with SSG and vision as Chair In 2012, Rima was invited to be a member of the SSG and then asked to serve as the Regional Vice-Chair for the Indian Ocean group in 2017, coordinating 15-20 members across the region. In this role, she led the first regional assessment for sharks and rays, compiling data from the group’s members to find that the region had the second-most threatened population of sharks and rays in the world. “It was great to have that data to be able to go back to gov- ernments and say we need to do something now,” she said. “We have something that shows these species are at risk and I think it has made a big difference.” Now, as Chair, Rima is eager to tap into the knowledge that has been compiled and collected by the SSG overall to build out a strong foundation for action going forward. “Over the last four years, the previous chairs have largely focused on the Global Sharks Trends Project to reassess all sharks and rays by the end of 2021. This was an incredible project to accomplish and results will be published in the next year,” she said. “It will be great to know the status of species so that we can move into action. We can finally say what our priority species are, start conservation planning, and act on the various threats, challenges, and issues across the differ- ent regions.” Rima’s first priority for the SSG includes communicating shark research and findings in a way that people can under- stand, regardless of expertise or background. She is hoping to do this by creating materials and tools that can be used across regions to inform the public and keep momentum go- ing for the group. “I’m looking forward to the group communicating about sharks in a way that makes sense to donors, policy makers and the public in general,” she said. “I also want to have tools developed so that anyone that comes into this field can take on a project and be able to do it in a way to informs policies and leads to changes.” Secondly, she is hoping to increase awareness about the issues facing shark species today. While finning was consid- ered the major threat to shark species 20 years ago, Rima says Photo by Elasmo Project | elasmoproject.com8 today there are many other issues bubbling up that people must understand to protect sharks effectively. “There’s been such an evolution in the challenges and the issues we have in shark conversation and we really need to focus on highlighting those problems,” she said. “We have problems with meat consumption, illegal fisheries, problems understanding why we even have issues – it’s such a com- plex thing to manage and we need to take so many different approaches to address it.” Finally, Rima is working to restructure the SSG to form work- ing groups to foster increased engagement and commitment from members. She acknowledged how the diversity of mem- bers’ skillsets and knowledge, along with the group’s regional approach, are strengths that she wants to lean into further. “I’ve created a list of working groups based on a survey where members identified key issues. I want members to be able to contribute to solving the issues they are knowledgea- ble about but also to compliment the work they do day-to-day so that it doesn’t take extra time. We are all volunteers after all.” Some of the key working groups on the horizon include those focused on bycatch, livelihoods, communications, and part- nerships with aquariums. Across all, Rima’s vision is for the working groups to consolidate information, identify lessons learned from projects thus far, and craft guidelines for working with partners or communities so that the SSG has a lasting impact. “I want to work with everyone to put things in writing – outlining the key priorities for research, species and for conservation in each of the nine SSG regions,” she said. “It’s really about being able to lead the path for the future. So many early career sci- entists are finally coming into the shark world and so it’s about guiding them to take the reins as the future leaders of the SSG.” Photo by Ester Serrao9 A fter about a decade at the helm of the Shark Specialist Group (SSG) we thought it would be useful to reflect a bit on our journey. We have met many amazing people, been inspired by the work that our members do (be it research, on the ground conservation, policy work, communica- tions, etc.) and tried to achieve as much as possible to promote awareness and solutions to the plight of sharks and rays. There have also been challenges, some related to the volunteer nature of the SSG, some to the availability of funding, some to the lack of knowledge on what is still a poorly understood group of species. Below is a bit of what we have learned along the way, and we hope that it might be useful to you and the SSG going forward. As one of the three great lineages of fishes – the sharks, rays and ghost sharks (Class Chondrichthyes) – embody many assessment and conservation problems. For the past decade, it has been our pleasure to contemplate these paradoxes and to learn from the members of the SSG and the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) on how to turn these challenges into conservation opportunities. Here we summarize some learnings and lessons along the Assess, Plan, Act journey of the SSG. ASSESS | The first twenty years were a very heavy lift for the first co-chairs, whose successes included building a membership drawn from all over the world, producing a global status report, and a comprehensive global Red List Assessment of all 1,000 or so known species. The Red Listing was done but beyond the as- sessors and report writers, few knew of the status of sharks. After a few false dawns the summary paper was even- tually accepted in the new journal eLife (elifesciences.org/ articles/00590). Then the hard work really began – we spent three solid weeks developing a communications strategy for this work, with an IUCN press release, a newswire release, our institutional press releases, infographics, YouTube videos, and factsheets. This combination of strong science well communi- The Co-Chairs’ view of a decade of shark conservation Written by: Prof. Nicholas Dulvy SSG Co-Chair 2009–2020 Simon Fraser University, Canada Prof. Colin Simpfendorfer SSG Co-Chair 2013–2020 James Cook University, Australia cated worked and has been a template of our science commu- nication successes over the past decade. Our training taught us that trustworthy science advice is founded upon published science. Hence, we didn’t unleash communications unless there is an underlying science product. Fortunately, in six years this paper has been viewed 32,000 times, downloaded nearly 4,000 times and cited nearly 800 times and now many people know that at least a quarter of sharks and rays are threatened. We have just completed the first reassessment and are working on the calculation of a Red List Index for 1970–2020 and we hope to provide a fuller summary of this capstone project in a later newsletter. PLAN | This eLife paper laid the foundation for our work pro- gram for the decade. We identified which families were most likely to disappear entirely. The most at-risk families were dominated not by sharks as many had believed, but instead were mainly what we branded as #flatsharks -- the rays and dorsoventrally flattened angel sharks. Once we understood the status of all species, and especially the taxonomic and spatial priorities, we had the scientific basis for setting priorities and planning for conservation. The highest ranked families included sawfishes, wedgefishes, giant guitarfishes and angel sharks and these became the focus of much of our conservation plan- ning work. We toyed with the idea of starting conservation planning for sawfishes. Few scientists knew anything about them, apart from Co-Chair Colin Simpfendorfer and Deputy Chair Sonja Ford- ham and the few others who sat on the US Sawfish Recovery team. But the case was made that if we can’t make the argu- ment to conserve sawfishes based on their Endangered and Critically Endangered status then it would be hard to make it for any other taxa. We scrutinised the recently published Strategic Planning for Species Conservation: A Handbook and many SSC Sawfish: A Global Strategy for Conservation Lucy R. Harrison | Nicholas K. Dulvy ISABEL ENDER | GUY STEVENS REBECCA CARTER | REBECCA ATKINS | DANNY COPELAND MOBULID RAYS CONSERVING TRUST Ma nta A modified version of this article was first published in the IUCN SSC Quarterly Report, March 2021 (iucn.org/commissions/ species-survival-commission/resources/ssc-quarterly-re- ports) Angelshark Action Plan for the Canary Islands 2016Next >