Sharks and Rays in Danger

In the first global analysis of its kind, an international team of researchers found that of the 1,041 species of cartilaginous fishes (chondrichthyans) investigated, 25 species are critically endangered, 43 are endangered, 113 are vulnerable, and 132 species are “near threatened.” That’s a total of 30 percent of the species analyzed; for 487 of the remaining species, there was insufficient data to classify the threat.

“Overall chondrichthyan extinction risk is substantially higher than for most other vertebrates, and only one-third of species are considered safe,” the authors wrote in their report, published this week (January 21) in eLife.

Source: Here