The Tide Turns for Sharks
The world’s most feared fish is finally getting serious protection.
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A century ago, fish scientists would have been surprised to hear that millions of people tune in every year for a week of adrenaline-packed entertainment about sharks. The prevailing attitude at that time, even among experts, was less “apex predator of the ocean” and more “harmless water-dweller”—at least when it came to humans.
That all changed in the summer of 1916, when a series of shark attacks on the Jersey Shore killed four people and unleashed a frenzy to hunt down the “man-eaters.”1 Frightened tourists vanished from beaches and hundreds of sharks were killed as American culture first sank its teeth into the narrative of sharks as vicious slayers. The cultural trauma was so deep that the event would eventually inspire the 1975 blockbuster Jaws.
This perception of sharks lasted for decades. Even in the 1990s, when data first began emerging that sharks were being overfished to perilous levels, scientists were still concerned about “the Jaws problem” stymieing budding efforts to protect the animal. “The question is,” Juan Sabalones, then curator of fishes at the National Aquarium, told The Washington Post in 1997, “can we turn people’s fascination with sharks into respect—instead of a just kill them mentality?”
Save the Whales Sharks
The debate over whether Shark Week helps or hinders in this regard aside, there is evidence that the tide is turning toward a serious global effort to, well, save the sharks. The issue is urgent. Of the thousand-plus shark and ray species catalogued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a third are at risk of extinction, largely due to the international demand for their fins.
Recent decades, however, have seen a sea change in regulation. Twenty years ago, writes Luke Warwick, director of shark and ray conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society, CITES—the major international convention that regulates trade in endangered species, with 184 member countries—had nearly no rules governing shark or ray products.
But today, CITES regulation covers 96% of all shark and ray species traded for their fins, and 70% of those for meat. Seventy of the 180 total species on the list were added just last year, when the convention also agreed to full commercial trade bans for all manta and devil rays, the oceanic white tip shark, and the whale shark, as well as what amounts to one for wedgefish and giant guitarfish—the first time it has enacted such strict measures for species that are regularly traded.
What’s more, explains Warwick, last year was also the first time that new marine species policies weren’t viewed as “highly controversial”; last year’s listings passed by a comfortable margin, a marked shift away from previous years in which just one or two votes meant the squeaking by of proposals. It’s a change he calls “hugely encouraging.”
Compliance, of course, remains a challenge, and varies country to country. In places that follow the rules, however, there is already evidence that tighter (legal) nets yield results: following a 2023 update to CITES, shark fin exports dropped 15% in the European Union between 2024 and 2025. The hope is that the most threatened sharks will follow the remarkable trajectory of green turtles, a trade ban for which was adopted in the 1980s. It was so successful that the IUCN reclassified the turtles from endangered to a species of least concern in 2025. (Now we just need Pixar to write a whale shark character—I’d argue that the gentle giants are just as chill as Crush and not at all as untrustworthy a friend as Bruce. Unless you’re krill, I suppose.)
It has already been demonstrated that with genuine protection, shark populations can be rebuilt. In the US, for example, the Atlantic blacktip shark is no longer considered overfished, after commercial quotas were introduced in the late 1990s, and sandbar sharks are on their way to recovery as well. Smaller projects involving local communities, from Brazil to Indonesia, are popping up around the world, and the idea that a live shark is a better economic proposition than a dead one is becoming increasingly apparent, particularly in island nations dependent on tourism. Since 2009, when Palau declared all the waters under its jurisdiction a sanctuary for sharks, triggering a “tsunami of conservation”—as one punny tour company describes it—16 other shark sanctuaries have been created, in the Maldives, Honduras, the Bahamas, and elsewhere. Just last month, Madagascar and Zanzibar announced full national protections for dozens of species of sharks and rays.
Swimming Like It’s . . . 1915
This is all far from a declaration of success. Sharks are highly migratory, which means that national policies can only do so much. As slow reproducers, they also require a long time for their numbers to rebound. Researchers are sounding the alarm that unless further action is taken within the next decade, some shark species will face extinction.
Still, attitudes have changed mightily from the times in which vigilantes roamed the waterways of New Jersey looking for child-snatching sharks—although in some ways, we’ve come full circle from one hundred years ago, when shark experts didn’t consider the animals to be a threat. The crucial difference is that now we have the knowledge to back that up.
The species behind the 1916 attacks was never identified, but some theorized that it was a great white.2 In the US, their population is likely increasing, and thanks to warmer waters caused by El Niño, great white sightings are reaching record highs this summer. But years of behavioral data collected by tagging and drones have scientists unconcerned about swimmers, surfers, and boaters sharing the water with these sharks—despite the plot of Jaws, they are uninterested in human snacks. Shark bites happen, of course, but they are extraordinarily rare. You’re more likely to die digging a hole in the sand.
Fun Facts About Sharks in Honor of Shark Week:
Three new shark species were discovered in 2025—a catshark, houndshark, and lanternshark—as well as a new manta ray!
Also last year, scientists learned that sharks deliberately produce sound. Rigs make a clicking sound by forcefully snapping their teeth together. In case this sounds scary, don’t worry. Rigs, also known as lemon fish, are very small, with flat teeth.
A hot debate in animal behavioral science is whether or not sharks play with toys.
Earlier this month, the largest great white shark ever tagged, aptly named Contender, was spotted off the coast of North Carolina.
—Emma Varvaloucas
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52: Number of African countries that have improved their pandemic preparedness since Covid
Go Figure
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Quick Hits
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🚑 Dutch students have created the world’s first solar-powered ambulance, a prototype soon to be tested in rural Kenya. They hope commercial interest will scale up the invention.
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📉 Homicide rates continue to fall across major American cities. If the post-pandemic trend continues, 2026 might see the lowest annual rate in over a century.
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👁️ “A cochlear implant for vision” can restore some sight to those with age-related macular degeneration, enough to read books and see road signs clearly. The implant is already available in Europe, but not yet in the US.
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🦾 A new type of robotic mastectomy that better preserves skin and nipple sensation has been performed in the US for the first time outside of clinical trials. The required incision is smaller, too—the length of a paperclip.
👏 Two American species have been downlisted from endangered to threatened: the Hawaiian stilt, a long-legged waterbird, and the razorback sucker, a freshwater fish that lives in the Colorado basin.
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And at least one guy thought it was a sea turtle.
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