A new study releases evidence for large marine protected areas (MPA) benefiting threatened sharks in the Atlantic Ocean. The Bahamas are a ‘shark sanctuary,’ a type of large MPA. Through a two-year analysis, researchers from the non-profit research institute Beneath the Waves (BTW) investigate sharks’ long-term behavior and movements within The Bahamas. A YouTube video highlighting results can be found here.
After The Bahamas banned commercial longlining in 1993, the island nation subsequently designated 243,000 square miles of its territorial waters as a shark sanctuary in 2011. Now regarded as the world’s shark capital, The Bahamas attract thousands of tourists to engage in its lucrative shark diving industry, valued at over $110 million per year.
“Worldwide, a large proportion of the ocean that has been protected has actually been created with the goal of saving sharks,” said Dr. Austin Gallagher, lead author on the study and Chief Scientist at BTW. “This study breaks new ground in actually being one of the few to evaluate whether these management actions are effective scientifically. Our data suggest that these protections match with the behavior of the animals they were designed to conserve, especially for reef sharks, which are the driver of the diving industry,” he added.
The study finds differing patterns of behavior between reef sharks and tiger sharks through passive telemetry and monitoring over nearly 50 sharks across two island regions.
“This new research helps to demonstrate that shark species with overlapping habitat use can also exhibit vastly different scopes of movement, making them a very tricky group of animals to conserve,” said Dr. Steve Kessel, director of marine research at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and a co-author of the study. “The Bahamas serves as a great example of a government adopting progressive conservation management approaches to account for this great variability of movement between shark species, and therefore preserving biodiversity where it is most critical.”
The findings underscore the value of regional MPAs to protect sharks and may support policies for creating future large-scale MPAs in the Greater Caribbean region. Results suggest that The Bahamas sanctuary is likely to conserve sharks. However, the study did not evaluate changes in sharks’ populations, which are slow-growing and would likely take decades to see measurable changes.
“We support the findings from this collaborative effort, which gives us some of the first insights into how our shark conservation policies are working. The findings support the notion that The Bahamas can continue to reap the economic benefits of sharks for generations with these protections in place,” said Mr. Eric Carey, Executive Director at Bahamas National Trust.
This study’s collaborators include authors from multiple NGOs, research organizations, and universities conducting long-term work in The Bahamas. Research efforts exclusively chartered Bahamian operators and businesses throughout the duration of the project. Students from The Exuma Foundation also assisted with data collection. The paper, entitled “Spatial connectivity and drivers of large shark habitat use within a large marine protected area in the Caribbean,” was published in Frontiers in Marine Science and can be freely downloaded and accessed by anyone.
To download an open-access PDF of the full research paper, please visit:
About Beneath the Waves
Founded in 2013, Beneath the Waves is an ocean NGO using cutting-edge science to advance scientific discovery and catalyze ocean policy, with a focus on threatened species and marine protected areas.