A new synthesis of Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) is trying to make sense of the pattern of presence and absence of Chondrichthyans (the group that includes sharks, rays and chimaeras) by asking a very simple question: where do these actually need space to survive?
Across the Bay of Bengal, Southeast Asia and the Northwest Pacific, researchers identified 122 ISRAs spanning roughly 1 million km²; while that might sound large, it is only about 3% of the region’s waters. Within those mapped areas are 121 species of Chondrichthyans (the group that includes sharks, rays and chimaeras) and nearly 76% of those species are already threatened with extinction. These ISRAs were not defined by guesswork — they were built from years of observations, fisheries records, citizen science dives, electronic tagging and local ecological knowledge. Experts gathered and debated and conversed about places where neonate sharks appear season after season, where manta rays aggregate predictably and where guitarfishes still persist in habitats that are shrinking around them. Yet even in a region that holds roughly a third of the world’s shark and ray diversity, protection is thin. Only about 5.4% of ISRA coverage overlaps with marine protected areas, and just 2.8% overlaps with no-take zones where extraction is fully restricted. In other words, the vast majority of critical habitat remains open to fishing pressure.
One of the enduring frustrations in conservation science is that many well-documented breeding, feeding and migratory habitats still lack meaningful protection. Why? Part of the answer lies in how uneven our knowledge is. The study shows a heavy reliance on citizen science and fisheries data, especially diver observations in places like Indonesia and the Philippines. That makes sense, as these are regions where marine tourism is active and where charismatic species like whale sharks and manta rays draw consistent attention. But charisma is a filter, ultimately shaping what gets seen, recorded and ultimately protected. For example, whale sharks and manta rays appear repeatedly across the dataset not because they are the only important species but because they are the easiest to observe. Meanwhile, deepwater sharks, freshwater rays and range-restricted species are far less represented because they live in places that are harder to reach, harder to study and often far outside the gaze of tourism. Plus, they tend to be less “cute.” So we end up with a conservation map that is detailed in some places, blurry in others. Indonesia stands out as the dominant contributor, holding 40 ISRAs and accounting for more than 70% of the region’s mapped ISRA coverage. Meanwhile, eight jurisdictions have no ISRAs at all due to data gaps.
These data gaps do not necessarily mean absence of sharks and rays, just absence of information, but the point remainds that what is not measured is often not managed. And these gaps begin with how the data is put together in the first place. Reproductive areas are the most frequently identified ISRA type, making up more than half of all delineations. Yet movement corridors, deepwater habitats and range-restricted zones are still underrepresented, allowing us to build a conservation system that mostly protects nearshore, visible and economically charismatic species while leaving deeper or more cryptic life forms outside the safety net. So are we conserving biodiversity, or just the parts of it that are easiest to see?
There are glimmers of alignment starting to occur between science and policy. Some ISRAs overlap with global biodiversity hotspots, including the Coral Triangle and parts of Japan and Taiwan where species richness peaks. But even in those regions, overlap with strict protection remains limited and most protected areas are multiple-use zones where fishing is still allowed, and enforcement varies widely. This creates a paradox, where the places most important for survival are often not the places with the strongest protection. While the ISRA framework gives governments and conservation planners something concrete to work with (e.g., mapped, evidence-based locations where intervention would be most meaningful), targets alone do not stop declines. Implementation does. And implementation depends on political will, funding, enforcement and often uncomfortable trade-offs with fisheries that millions of people rely on for food and livelihoods. That is especially true in Asia, which supports some of the highest chondrichthyan fisheries in the world.
Protecting animals that move across borders, economic systems and cultural realities requires conservation approaches that embrace, rather than simplify, that complexity. Sharks and rays do not recognize political boundaries, yet the policies designed to protect them are often confined by them. A whale shark may pass through the waters of multiple countries in a single migration. A wedgefish may spend its life in coastal habitats shared by communities that depend on fishing for food and income. Effective conservation therefore cannot rely on isolated protected areas or disconnected national policies. It requires cooperation across jurisdictions, industries and communities, as well as a recognition that ecological realities rarely align neatly with human ones. And failure to close the gap between where sharks and rays live and where protection exists will likely accelerate ongoing declines. We are already seeing this unfold in the form of population declines, local extinctions and shrinking ranges. The loss of the Java Stingaree (Urolophus javanicus) and the precarious status of Lost Sharks (Carcharhinus obsoletus) are reminders that extinction is not a distant possibility but an ever looming present-day reality. What makes these losses particularly sobering is that many are occurring despite growing scientific knowledge; we increasingly know where these animals feed, reproduce and migrate and we have a clearer picture than ever before of the habitats that sustain them… yet knowledge alone does not safeguard species.
That is what makes the ISRA process so significant, transforming scattered observations into a roadmap for action, identifying the places where conservation efforts could have the greatest impact. The challenge now is not finding these habitats but deciding what to do with that information. Whether Asia’s sharks and rays continue their decline, or begin to recover, will depend on how quickly scientific understanding is translated into meaningful protection.
The map exists.
The question is whether we have the will follow it before more of these species disappear from it altogether.
