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  • Review Article
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Bending back the curve of shark and ray biodiversity loss

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 2, pages 92–115 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sharks and rays are sentinels of the state of the ocean. Since the mid-twentieth century, overall abundance has declined by nearly 65% and over one-third (37.5%) of species are threatened, causing widespread changes in community structure. This crisis stems from unregulated fisheries expansion coupled with inadequate catch-and-trade monitoring that fail to account for the complexity of shark and ray products, their use and global trade flows. In this Review, we assess the state of shark and ray populations worldwide, remedies to reverse their decline, and challenges and barriers to conservation. Stark geographic and taxonomic biases persist in essential data, requiring integrated species distribution modelling, data mobilization, trait prediction and new threat maps of fishing mortality. Addressing management gaps requires regulatory and market-based approaches that must ultimately reduce fishing mortality, link international frameworks to national fisheries management tools, and implement a mitigation hierarchy of management actions through sound compliance management across supply, trade and demand chains. Case studies reveal strengths and weaknesses in management effectiveness and demonstrate successful recoveries for wide-ranging and restricted-range species. Finally, we identify 6 key challenges and propose 25 research questions and actionable recommendations to bend back the curve of shark and ray biodiversity loss.

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Fig. 1: Extinction risk and the spatial patterning of shark, ray and chimaera richness.
Fig. 2: Taxonomic differentiation of catch.
Fig. 3: Bending back the biodiversity loss curve of sharks and rays.
Fig. 4: A theory of shark and ray conservation change.
Fig. 5: Progress and priorities in shark and ray fisheries management.

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Acknowledgements

H.B. acknowledges the Darwin Initiative (project ref: 30-008) and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. N.K.D. was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs Program. P.C. acknowledges the FUNCAP visiting researcher grant (#PVS-0215-00123.02.00/23) and The Save Our Seas Foundation Conservation Fellowship (SOSF588). This work was supported by ISblue Project, Interdisciplinary graduate school for the Blue Planet (ANR-17-EURE-0015) and co-funded by a grant from the French government under the programme “Investissements d’Avenir” embedded in France 2030, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no 101208931. This is a contribution from the “Baited Switch: Is global trade driving unsustainable fisheries?” working group, sponsored by the Morpho programme of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), Santa Barbara, USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth to Ocean Research Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

    Nicholas K. Dulvy, Rachel M. Aitchison, Amanda E. Arnold, Jay H. Matsushiba, Christopher G. Mull & Wade J. VanderWright

  2. Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Hollie Booth

  3. School of Environmental and Natural Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, UK

    Hollie Booth

  4. Programa de Pós-graduação em Sistemática, Uso e Conservação da Biodiversidade (PPGSis), Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil

    Patricia Charvet

  5. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand

    Brittany Finucci

  6. Shark Advocates International, The Ocean Foundation, Washington, DC, USA

    Sonja V. Fordham

  7. Integrated Fisheries Lab, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Christopher G. Mull

  8. School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Christopher G. Mull

  9. Maurice Lamontagne Institute, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Mont Joli, Quebec, Canada

    Nathan Pacoureau

  10. IRD/CNRS/UBO/Ifremer, Laboratoire des sciences de l’environnement marin - IUEM, Plouzané, France

    Nathan Pacoureau & Colin A. Simpfendorfer

  11. College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia

    Cassandra L. Rigby

  12. Department of Wildlife and Range Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Issah Seidu

  13. School of Life and Environmental Sciences. Faculty of Science Engineering and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

    C. Samantha Sherman

  14. Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Colin A. Simpfendorfer

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All authors researched literature for the article, contributed substantially to discussion of the content, wrote the article, and reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Related links

Around Us Project: www.seaaroundus.org

Australian Shark and Ray report card: https://www.fish.gov.au/shark-and-ray-reports

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna: https://cites.org

Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals Sharks Memorandum of Understanding: https://www.cms.int/sharks

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: https://www.fao.org/

International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List: https://www.iucnredlist.org/

IPOA-Sharks: https://www.fao.org/ipoa-sharks

Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: https://www.cbd.int/gbf

Sustainable Development Goals: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

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Dulvy, N.K., Aitchison, R.M., Arnold, A.E. et al. Bending back the curve of shark and ray biodiversity loss. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 2, 92–115 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00120-2

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