Atlantic Mantas, Rays & Sharks

The International Commission for the Conservation for Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) will meet in Cyprus next week. If you want to know why that’s important for sharks, mantas and rays read on…

Curious as it is to call sharks and rays ‘tuna-like’ species, they are included in what ICCAT covers when representatives of around 57 countries get together to decide how much tuna and tuna-like species can be caught in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Shark Trust is a UK-based organisation that collaborates with other Shark League partners on raising awareness of the importance of apex predators and shark conservation. They are heading to the ICCAT meeting to secure protection for mantas & devil rays (mobulids) and Whale Sharks in the Atlantic.

Mobulids and Whale Sharks feed close to the surface, filtering plankton and hoovering up shoals of small fish, which makes them vulnerable to becoming bycatch to the fishing industry. Because they reach sexual maturity relatively late and have very slow reproduction rates, the loss of each individual is detrimental to the survival of these magnificent species.

Left image: Manta Ray diving, Maldives 2014. By Henrik Winther licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. Right: Devil Ray, Chile. By Tiago Matias licensed under CC By-SA 4.0.

Through my work with Pelican of London and the Shark Trust, I have become aware of how many species of sharks and rays we have in our waters and how endangered many of them are. We regularly collect shark and ray egg cases along the beaches of the Irish Sea and English Channel during ocean science outreach programmes on the sail training tall ship Pelican of London and contribute the data to the Shark Trust app.

If you want to support shark and ray conservation, you can turn your next family walk on the beach into a mermaid’s purse hunt and report your findings in the Shark Trust app. You can also sign up for the BIG Shark PLEDGE and receive information on shark conservation campaigns and support the Shark League’s work to lobby ICCAD.

#ISupportMobulids
#ISupportWhaleSharks
#ICCAT
#BigSharkPledge

Featured Image: Female Whale Shark, Seychelles. (c) . Oliver Roux 2003. Reproduced under CC license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/