Global Shark Conservation Sees Historic Regulatory Breakthroughs
Plus, the world's first fully solar-powered ambulance
After decades of facing severe overfishing and cultural stigma, global shark populations are finally rebounding thanks to strict new international trade bans and expanding marine sanctuaries. Emma Varvaloucas, Executive Director of The Progress Network, shares how much our views and treatment of sharks have shifted over the last century and why there’s reason for optimism.
Plus: a team of 23 students in the Netherlands successfully engineered the world’s first fully solar-powered ambulance to deliver off-grid medical care, Indigenous youth are reclaiming traditional face tattooing to preserve their cultural heritage, and robust conservation programs have helped two wildlife species in America bounce back from the brink of extinction.
Watch the full episode below:
All episodes of the What Could Go Right? podcast are available here.
Transcript
Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.
Emma Varvaloucas: Shark numbers are up, but that’s a good thing. 23 students in the Netherlands are putting us all to shame. Gen Z is reclaiming traditional face tattoos, and two more species are back from the brink of extinction. Welcome to the What Could Go Right? Progress Report, where we dive into all of the good news that you may have missed because it was buried under the barrage of bad news.
Hey, if you’re new here, I’m Emma Varvaloucas, and I’m the executive director of The Progress Network. Let’s get into it.
There’s a lot that scientists were wrong about 100 years ago. I mean, we thought our galaxy was the only one that existed, and people drank radium water for their health. We didn’t even understand how gravity worked until Einstein released one of his greatest hits, The Theory of General Relativity, in 1915.
But there was one thing we believed that was pretty close to reality. The prevailing attitude at the time about sharks, even among experts, was that they were more harmless water dwellers than man eaters. So how did our view of sharks become so skewed? It happened basically overnight. The year is 1916, and you’re decked out in your long tunic and stockings, ready to hit the beach and take a dip in the ocean off the coast of the Jersey Shore.
But shouts to stay out of the water are echoing down the beach because a series of shark attacks have left four people dead and unleashed a frenzy to hunt down the predator. Frightened tourists completely vanished from beaches. Vigilantes patrolled the waters, and hundreds of sharks were hunted down and killed as American culture suddenly sank its teeth into a brand new narrative: the shark as a vicious, calculating, man-eating monster.
It was so concerning to people that then President Woodrow Wilson called a meeting to discuss the attacks with his cabinet. It was a cultural trauma so deep that it would eventually inspire the 1975 blockbuster film Jaws. For decades after that 1916 summer, the perception of sharks as bloodthirsty killers dominated the public consciousness.
And that belief would become a problem when marine biologists in the 1990s first began noticing a terrifying trend. Sharks were being overfished to perilous near extinction levels. Transparently, the overfishing had less to do with the sharks’ bad rep and more to do with people thinking that their fins are really tasty in soup, or so I’ve heard.
Around the same time, Discovery Channel debuted its now staple of the summer Shark Week programming. According to the network, that very first year, they doubled their primetime average ratings. The people wanted shark content, and they still do. Around 25 million people tune into Shark Week, which by the way, just ended.
And no, this episode is not sponsored by the Discovery Channel or the shark lobby for that matter. Anyway, whether full on almost impossible to avoid shark immersion therapy in our homes makes people more or less scared of sharks is the topic of heated academic debates. No, really. But either way, for years the plight of the shark was a difficult cause to get people to rally behind, despite their dwindling numbers.
In 1997, Juan Sabalones, then curator of fishes at the National Aquarium, summed up the task at hand perfectly. He asked in the Washington Post, “Can we turn people’s fascination with sharks into respect instead of just a kill them mentality?” And they desperately need our help. Of the 1,000 plus shark and ray species cataloged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, a full third are at a risk of extinction, largely due to that soup we mentioned earlier.
The good news is today there is evidence that the tide is turning toward a serious global effort to, well save the sharks. Recent decades have seen a complete sea change in global regulation. Just 20 years ago, CITES, which is the major international convention regulating trade in endangered species with 184 member countries, had almost zero rules governing the trade of shark or ray products.
Fast-forward to today, CITES regulations now cover 96% of all shark and ray species traded for their fins, and 70% of those traded for meat. Just last year, an astonishing 70 new species were added to the protected list. The convention also agreed to full commercial trade bans for all manta and devil rays, the oceanic whitetip shark, and the whale shark, as well as what amounted to full bans for the wedge fish and giant guitarfish.
I know at this point that it sounds like I’m just making up fish names, but I swear those are real. This was a historic milestone. It was the first time such strict measures were enacted for regularly traded species. And perhaps even more exciting, Luke Warwick, the director of shark and ray conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society, noted that last year was the first time that these new marine policies weren’t viewed as “highly controversial.”
In the past, these protections would barely squeak by. Last year, they passed by comfortable margins. It’s an attitude shift he calls, quote, “hugely encouraging.” And these regulations do actually work. While compliance varies from country to country, tighter legal nets yield real results where the rules are followed.
After a 2023 update to CITES, for example, shark fin exports in the European Union dropped by 15% between 2024 and 2025. Conservationists hope that the most threatened sharks can follow the remarkable comeback trajectory of the green turtle, which were reclassified from endangered to a species of least concern in 2025 thanks to 1980s trade bans like the ones that were just enacted.
Now all we need is for Pixar to write a whale shark surfer dude character. I’d argue that the gentle giants are just as chill as Crush, and not at all as untrustworthy of a friend as Bruce, unless you’re a krill, I suppose. We already have proof that with genuine protection, shark populations absolutely can rebound.
It’s a shocking concept, I know. In the United States, commercial quotas introduced in the late 1990s have helped the Atlantic blacktip shark recover to the point where it is no longer considered overfished. Sandbar sharks are well on their way to recovery as well. Beyond top-down international laws, local efforts are popping up everywhere.
From Brazil to Indonesia, communities are realizing a powerful economic truth. A live shark is worth significantly more in tourism revenue than a dead shark is worth for its fins, a revelation crucial for island nations in particular. In 2009, Palau boldly declared all of its waters a shark sanctuary.
This triggered what one punny tour company called a “tsunami of conservation.” Since then, 16 other shark sanctuaries have been established in places like the Maldives, Honduras, and the Bahamas. And just last month, Madagascar and Zanzibar announced full national protections for dozens of shark and ray species.
Now, let’s be clear. This isn’t a victory lap just yet. Sharks are highly migratory, meaning one country’s protected waters become meaningless when sharks swim into unregulated territory. They’re also slow reproducers, so it takes a good long time for their numbers to bounce back, even when given the opportunity.
Researchers warn that unless we take even more action in the next decade, some species could still face extinction. But let’s take a step back and look at the big picture. We have come a remarkably long way from the vigilante mobs roaming the waterways of New Jersey, hunting for monsters. Interestingly, we’ve also almost come full circle to how experts felt 100 years ago: that sharks aren’t a threat to us.
The crucial difference is that today we have years of behavioral data from things like tagging and drone footage to actually back that up. Take the great white shark, for example. In the US, their populations are likely increasing, and thanks to warmer waters caused by El Nino, sightings are reaching record highs this summer.
Yet despite its fame as the star of Jaws, scientists these days are unconcerned about swimmers, surfers, and boaters sharing the water with these sharks. Because the science proves what they happened to be right about from the beginning. They just aren’t interested in human snacks. Well, except for that shark in 1916, but to be fair, maybe just being in New Jersey made him cranky.
We’ve replaced fear with facts and panic with protection, and now we need to quit the real threat, the human appetite for eating sharks. But if we keep up this fresh momentum, these incredible beasts will continue to patrol our oceans for generations to come.
Before we get into our shorter stories, here are some numbers that will make you smile.
500, the number of new bacterial species discovered by the mapping of the Great Barrier Reef’s microbiome. 48%, the drop in Beijing’s air pollution levels between 2010 and 2024, in part thanks to mass EV adoption. And 52, the number of African countries that have improved their pandemic preparedness since COVID.
And here are our quick hits for today. First up, I have a story that is going to make you feel pretty bad about how you spent your college years. While most of us were eating cold pizza and cramming for midterms, a group of 23 students in the Netherlands spent the last year building something that could literally save lives across the globe.
They’ve just taken the wraps off of what they believe is the world’s first fully solar-powered ambulance. It looks a bit like a spaceship on wheels, but they’ve named it Stella Juve. Which essentially translates from Latin as Stella helps. And it does a lot more than help. This isn’t your standard ambulance designed to rush someone to the emergency room.
This vehicle is the emergency room. It’s built to bring the doctor to the patient in completely off-grid areas. The brilliant part is that the solar panels on the roof don’t just power the wheels to push this thing up to 75 miles an hour. They also power a full suite of life-saving medical gear inside.
We’re talking X-ray machines, defibrillators, ultrasound equipment, and refrigerated storage for vaccines. On a sunny day, this rolling clinic can cover over 400 miles, and thanks to a massive onboard battery, it keeps running and keeps the medical gear powered even when it’s cloudy or the sun goes down. So why solar?
Well, the students teamed up with the humanitarian group Amref Health Africa to solve a massive logistical nightmare. In many remote villages, traveling to a clinic means navigating incredibly tough terrain where gas is expensive and the power grid is virtually nonexistent. Because the Stella Juba runs on the sun, it doesn’t need to return to a central hub to refuel.
It just keeps going. Next month, the team is taking the vehicle to Kenya to test it out in the wild. They’re even packing shovels and spare tires to deal with the off-road elements. But here is the craziest part. These students built a working prototype in just one year. But they know that they can’t mass produce it from their dorm room, so they are actively throwing down the gauntlet to major tech and automotive companies, basically saying, “We did this in 12 months. Imagine what you could do. Come help us scale this up.” So to any tech industry titans watching, your move.
When you hear face tattoo, you might immediately think of SoundCloud one-hit wonders like the Island Boys. If you know, you know. But for a growing movement of young people today, getting their face inked isn’t just an aesthetic choice. It’s a powerful, permanent weapon against colonialism.
For thousands of years, indigenous communities around the globe, from the Inuit in Alaska to the Maori in New Zealand, practiced traditional face tattooing. For many of these cultures, striking chin stripes or intricate forehead designs weren’t just an art piece.
They also marked life’s milestones, such as coming of age, signified family lineage, and held various other meanings. But when colonizers and missionaries arrived, indigenous culture was actively and passively erased. In New Zealand, for example, tattooing was banned in 1907, alongside other Maori art forms and practices, and the tradition nearly died out.
Even when the law was repealed in the ‘60s, for a long time, face tattoos were associated with criminals or gang membership. But Millennials and Gen Z are officially flipping the script. From Canada to New Zealand to Taiwan, the new generations of indigenous peoples are standing up to the echoes of colonialism and returning to their traditional tattooing methods.
It’s a full-on revival, and I am 100% here for it, not that anybody cares that much about my opinion. They’re even taking to TikTok and other social media platforms to educate others about their distinctive ink. This is all part of a larger trend aiming to preserve and reclaim indigenous culture, a welcome 180 after decades of suppression.
And finally, we’ve got not one, but two American species to throw a back from the brink of extinction party for. First up, the aptly named Hawaiian stilt. Back in the 1940s, this incredibly long-legged wading bird’s numbers were down to just around 200. They were practically gone. But thanks to decades of massive conservation efforts, a new University of Hawaii study just confirmed their population has soared to over 1,500 today.
So they are back to strutting their stuff all over the island’s wetlands. And over in the Colorado River Basin, we have the, again, aptly named razorback sucker. This is a very quirky looking fish with a sharp ridge on its back that has been swimming around for millions of years. It was on the fast track to disappearing entirely, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service just officially down-listed it from endangered to threatened.
There’s still work to do, but that shift signals that breeding programs and habitat protections are actually working.
I hope these stories remind you that there’s so much good in the world, so it’s important to shift our focus away from all of the bad. Send this episode to your friend who’s super bummed that they didn’t win Seattle’s Jimothy drawing contest.
Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on your preferred podcast platform, and leave us a review. Use the link in the description to sign up for our newsletter if you’d like more of these stories right to your inbox, and comment if you’ve got a good news story we should cover next week.
What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and Kaleidoscope.
Follow us on X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok: @progressntwrk
 | A guest post by
|