A HEALTHIER OCEAN STARTS WITH DATA.

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Shark-Guardian

Shark Guardian has been instrumental in the success of eShark in Thailand. Shark Guardian regularly tours Thailand giving science-based talks to various audiences about the value of sharks to their ecosystem and describing their conservation concerns. While delivering these presentations they also encourage divers and fishers to participate and contribute their observations to eShark. Shark Guardian requests (almost) monthly progress reports from eShark which they use to target their efforts, celebrate the successes of the participants, and encourage regular participation to this concentrated count. Thanks to the efforts of Shark Guardian, eShark now has >13,000 records submitted from Thailand - one of the largest concentrated censuses in the eShark database! 

In 2015-16, Annabel Westell, an Honours Student at Dalhousie University, supervised by Christine Ward-Paige and Heike Lotze, aims to assess the distribution and vulnerability of reef-associated sharks and rays in Thailand to determine which areas, if any, are threatened by fishing or habitat modification. 

Data from divers, fishers, satellite images, and published and grey literature will be compiled and used to assess spatial patterns in elasmobranch diversity, abundance, and threats from human pressures in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. Habitat degradation, human population density and fishing intensity will be the focal threats.

It is expected that the findings of this project could provide information to stakeholders on the vulnerability of elasmobranchs at various spatial scales in Thailand, and to delineate priority conservation areas.