Species Extinction

Subject – Environment

Context – Over 390 species of sharks, rays, chimaera in danger of extinction: Study

Concept –

Over 37 per cent of the world’s world’s sharks, rays and chimaeras are facing extinction due to overfishing, compounded by loss and degradation of habitat, climate change and pollution, warned a new study.
As many as 220 of the total 661 species of rays are threatened, followed by sharks (167 of 536) and chimeras (four of 52), according to the extensive survey done from 2013 to 2021.
The chondrichthyan fishes that faced extinction more than doubled since the last global survey done in 2014 that showed 181 of a total of 1,041 species were threatened.
One ray species, the Java stingaree (Urolophusjavanicus), may have already gone extinct according to the reclassification of threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) earlier this year.
Overfishing, mainly by industrial-scale fisheries, is the main threat for all the 391 threatened chondrichthyan fish species, the study found. Most threatened species are used for food consumption by human beings.
Habitat loss and degradation of habitat, in addition to overfishing, caused nearly a fifth of the species to be threatened, according to the report.
The researchers called for science-based limits on fishing, effective marine protected areas, among other approaches to minimise mortality of threatened species.