Far more manta and devil rays die in fisheries than previously understood, with annual deaths surpassing 259,000 individuals, a new study has found. It suggests that fishing pressure on these slow-growing species in the genus Mobula is much greater than shown by existing data. The research, conducted by an international team of scientists and published in the journal Biological Conservation in November, draws on data from 99 countries and multiple sources, including fisheries landing surveys, databases and published records, and expert interviews. In seeking to generate the most comprehensive estimate to date of global mobulid mortality, the team found that many fishing nations either don’t report mobulid catches or aggregate them with other species, obscuring their true scale. The new est

See Full Page