Mexico adopts protections for Atlantic sharks

Mexico recently adopted national regulations protecting several threatened shark species in the Atlantic from being caught or retained as bycatch. Shark conservationists welcome the protections but say they are long overdue, coming years after the country’s commitments to a multilateral fishery regulator. Mexican fisheries catch a significant number of various shark species in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The new rules are meant for longline fisheries operating within all the waters managed under the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. These fisheries are now prohibited from retaining on board, storing, transshipping, disembarking or offering for sale five types of sharks, either whole or in part.