Global shark fishing mortality still rising despite widespread regulatory change

Over the last two decades, sharks have been increasingly recognized among the world’s most threatened wildlife, and hence received heightened scientific and regulatory scrutiny. Yet, the effect of protective regulations on shark fishing mortality has not been evaluated at a global scale. Here we estimate that total fishing mortality increased from 76 to 80 million sharks between 2012-2019, ~25 million of which were threatened species. Mortality increased by 4% in coastal waters but decreased 7% in pelagic fisheries, especially across the Atlantic and Western Pacific. By linking fishing mortality data to the global regulatory landscape, we show that widespread legislation designed to prevent shark finning did not reduce mortality, but regional shark fishing or retention bans had some success. These analyses combined with expert interviews highlight evidence-based solutions to reverse the continued overexploitation of sharks.

Methods
The mortality estimates provided here resulted from the analysis of many datasets, both public and private. All datasets used in this project are detailed in the attached data Inventory. Please refer to the README.md for a brief description of the methods, to the paper Supplemental Methods for in-depth methods, and to the associated software works for the code used to generate the attached datasets. Each dataset is accompanied by a README that provides an overview of the methods used to generate the dataset and a description of dataset variables.