The discovery of a third nursery for critically endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks was found where adults of the species raise their young off the Galapagos Islands.
The discovery is a boon for a species that is critically endangered, according to the Ecuadorian national park on Friday.
The largest island in the Galapagos, Isabela Island, is home to the so-called haven for young hammerhead sharks, which are less than a year old.
The haven protects the sharks during mating and the early stages of development.
Eduardo Espinoza, a Galapagos National Park ranger, stated that finding these new breeding grounds is crucial, particularly for the critically endangered hammerhead shark, which is a symbol of the Galapagos.
Espinoza and other investigators spent months traveling the 13 major islands that make up the Galapagos, which are about 1,000 kilometers from the Ecuadorian mainland, before finding the nursery off the coast of Isabela, the largest of the islands.
Areas of Conservation for Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks
The park expressed the hope that the research would influence the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to list these nurseries among the crucial locations for shark conservation, which is currently a distinct category of protection, The Vibes reported.
According to the statement, scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) look for shallow nurseries where they can raise their young safely.
The shark is an open-water hunter, but commercial fishing to sate East Asia's appetite for its fins, which, according to Reuters, are commonly used to make shark fin soup, has severely harmed the species.
In the interest of safeguarding the species, the park has not provided precise locations for the three nurseries.
To track their migration patterns and learn more about how they interact with other sharks, a few of the sharks at the nurseries were fitted with tags.
Galapagos Marine Reserve
There are about 30 species of sharks in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, one of the biggest and most diverse in the world.
The blacktip shark is one of these species, and it also has nipping areas there.
Shark populations in the waters of the Galapagos Islands are thought to be the densest in the world.
The Galápagos Islands are a World Heritage Site due to their exceptional biodiversity and role as Charles Darwin's source of inspiration for the theory of evolution.
Moreover, 97% of their landmass is already protected as a national park.
However, prior to its conservation, under 1% of the nearby water was completely protected.
Enric Sala, a resident National Geographic explorer who led a Pristine Seas expedition to the region in December 2015, claimed that as a result, both legal and illegal fishing have been having an increasingly negative impact on wildlife over the past few years.
Fishing is no longer permitted in the new sanctuary or conservation zones as of 2016 when a new sanctuary took over the area's protection.
Additionally prohibited are oil drilling and mining.
Due to the convergence of four major currents and the upwelling of nutrient-rich waters, the ocean waters off the Galápagos is a highly productive ecosystem, claims Sala.
Particularly the islands of Darwin and Wolf are home to large populations of sharks, including reef sharks and migratory hammerheads.
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