Tuesday January 13, 2026
Phys —
The limited range of marine protected areas (MPAs) offers reduced protection to vulnerable species such as the highly mobile silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis). Because the survival of these sharks is threatened by commercial fisheries and the global fin trade, more research is needed to understand their movements and how to improve levels of protection, a new study has found.
In the first assessment of its kind, “Pelagic sharks in parks: Marine protected areas in the Eastern Tropical Pacific provide limited protection to silky sharks tracked from the Galapagos Marine Reserve,” found that while the species spent less than half their time within the 133,000 square kilometer Galápagos Marine Reserve (GMR), they were tracked outside the relative safety of the MPAs for over half of the study period.