Panama looks to science, fishers, and the law to protect its sharks and rays

Off Panama's Chepillo Island, marine biologist Yehudi Rodríguez boards industrial fishing vessels every two weeks to catalog and release sharks, rays, and other bycatch tangled in purse seine nets, work she has done for five years and roughly 407 tagged animals.

The vessel's operator, Promarina, says it keeps bycatch under 1.2%, comfortably inside the 5% ceiling required by its Marine Trust sustainability certification, and plans to add more biologists to train crews.

National data on shark and ray populations remains thin, and illegal fin exports and domestic shark meat consumption continue, but government agency ARAP and NGOs like CeDePesca and Shark Defenders are placing biologists on boats and pushing for the population studies nobody has funded yet.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.