Widespread Diversity Deficits of Coral Reef Sharks and Rays

Abstract

A global survey if coral reefs reveals that over fishing is driving resident shark species toward extinction, causing diversity deficits in reef elasmobranch ( shark and ray) assemblages. Our species-level analysis analysis revealed global declines of 60 to 73% for five common resident reef shark species and that individual shark species were not detetced at 34 to 47% of surveyed reefs.