“Sharks are very slow-growing,” David Jacoby, a Zoological Society of London (ZSL) researcher studying shark social networks in BIOT, told Mongabay. Sudden declines in populations of any species are never good news however, sharks are particularly vulnerable to these changes due to their ambling life history. “ recorded sharp declines in reef shark abundances… which the creation of the marine reserve in 2010 hoped to reverse,” said David Tickler, a researcher from the University of Western Australia studying the effects of illegal shark fishing in the Indian Ocean. Researchers have been recording shark populations in BIOT since the 1970s, and it has become clear that the numbers they are witnessing now are not what they should be. The sheltered atolls of BIOT attract several species of pelagic and reef shark here, mothers can give birth without their young being immediately threatened with predation, and juveniles can learn to hunt in lagoons before heading into the open ocean. The British Government created the reserve to conserve the archipelago’s biodiverse ecosystems, amidst concerns that increased fishing pressure from neighboring countries, including India and Sri Lanka, would decimate populations of important marine species. Salomans Atoll in the Chagos Archipelago: the atolls are believed to serve as nurseries for juvenile sharks.
The BIOT Marine Protected Area was created in 2010 and comprises 544,000 square kilometers (210,040 square miles) of marine habitat, including an archipelago of seven atolls, at least 70 islands, and some of the world’s most pristine coral reefs. The Chagos Archipelago, otherwise known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), boasts one of the largest marine reserves in the world. Little did they know that over the course of 10 days during the previous December, 15 of their tagged individuals had been illegally fished.
DEEP BLUE SHARK TRACKING 2019 DOWNLOAD
In April 2015, researchers headed out to the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean to service acoustic receivers they had dotted around the archipelago, and to download tag data from the 95 grey reef and silvertip sharks they had tagged a year prior.
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