Editorial: A note from the Chair

Dear readers,

This past year has felt like a year of catch-up – field work, meetings, conferences – everything has been moving so quickly. With the pandemic slowly receding in most countries, the pace of life picked up again. With this came travel to see new and wonderful places; a chance to reconnect with family, friends, and colleagues; enjoy conversations in the hallways of conferences; and, most importantly, some of the greatest wins for sharks and rays in history. Acknowledging that there are other significant wins for sharks in 2022, such as the quotas for Shortfin Makos in the South Atlantic or the protection of the Greenland Shark in the Northwest Atlantic, the one event most of you will have heard of is that 104 shark and ray species were listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). This was a giant step to regulate the trade of most shark species and a welcome global recognition of the need to conserve these species. We provide a list of the now 150 shark and ray species listed and look forward to working with many of you to ensure the effective implementation of these listings. Many of us also met in Valencia, Spain, on the sidelines of Sharks International. It felt somewhat surreal to see everyone together in person again, but it was great to come together a few days before the conference and talk sharks all day. Over 40 contributors from around the world gathered to update our Global Report on the Status of Sharks, Rays, and Chimaeras. I am so grateful to everyone who took the time to join us and those who couldn’t participate in person but have been working extremely hard to ensure we have the best available information from around the world. Our feature story is the first of a series of fact sheets on human impacts on sharks and rays. Developed in collaboration with the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), the first of these relates to overfishing, the biggest threat to this group, and provides an overview of impacts from industrial, artisanal, and recreational fisheries. But we also have lots more! We have a beautiful story from Iran where a team of early career scientists came together and travelled the whole coastline of the country to talk to fisher communities and gather information on shark fisheries and trade. Sadly, the stories recounted are similar to many areas globally where older fishers have seen drastic declines in these species over time. From Indonesia, we hear about efforts to develop and implement shark and ray bycatch mitigation technologies using electro-shields and the promising results of various trials. As the world’s largest shark and ray fishing country, it’s encouraging to see how the next steps of this work will include engagement with the fishing industry to test this technology at various sites. From the Mediterranean Sea, an overview of the species occurring in the Adriatic Sea highlights this area as a biodiversity hotspot but notes the local extinction of three species within this body of water. From Brazil, we are introduced to a new method that allows us to identify shark carcasses from illegal catches - by looking at the microanatomy of the skin! It’s interesting to see how the skin structure of species can be so different, allowing them to separate between species. Our regular Q&A contributor Chelsea Stein introduces us to three more SSG early career scientists from various regions. We learn more about their respective work in Guatemala, Cabo Verde, and India. Once again, their work shows how passionate the new generation of shark scientists is. The Important Shark and Ray Area (ISRA) project has continued to move at a fast pace. We provide an update on progress with the newly developed selection criteria finally being applied to the first region of the world – the Central and South American Pacific. The results of the candidate areas identified will be made public shortly as we launch our new eAtlas and before we move to the Mediterranean region for our next workshop. We also look at the synergies between the ISRA project and SARRI, the Shark and Ray Recovery Initiative, and highlight the importance of collaborations across sectors and research groups to ensure we have data to support spatial planning and the development of recovery plans. This issue ends with a collection of beautiful imagery of feeding aggregations of Grey Reef Sharks in Fakarava, French Polynesia and street art or ‘Artivism’. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I genuinely believe that with these collections of photographs and art, we can showcase even more how magnificent these species are and inspire ocean stewardship. As always, none of this would be possible without the support of SSG members and shark lovers worldwide who contribute to Shark News. And, of course, I continue to be extremely grateful to Michael and Peter Scholl, who make it a reality. Rima

| Laurent Ballesta | laurentballesta.com Lemon Shark eye, Bahamas Photo by