The difference this time is that the latest targets are the mobulids - the newest commodity in the often senseless and environmentally destructive Asian Medicinal Trade. In fact, it’s a depressing repetition played out in our oceans and throughout our planet on a regular basis. So why the sudden change of fortune for the world's manta and devil rays? The underlying answer to this question is not a new one. Yet out of all these countries, only in Indonesia, Peru and the Philippines are there now national laws in place to protect these vulnerable species. The Philippines, Indonesia, Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Peru, and Tanzania have all followed Mexico’s lead, with similar trends of population declines reported in many of these countries where data exists. Many other countries have also targeted their manta and devil ray populations with similar results, switching from a local artisanal fishery to a commercial export fishery wherever a market for their products can be found. Even today, after over a decades since the fisheries collapsed, virtually no mantas are recorded in this area and those that are still fall victim to illegal fishing, or bycatch. It was not until 2007 that the Mexican Government finally passed legislation protecting the manta and mobula rays in Mexican waters, but by then the damage had already been done. Within just a decade the manta ray population within the Sea of Cortez was virtually wiped out and the fishery collapsed. Only the choicest flesh was sold for consumption, while the remainder was often used as bait in lobster pots, or simply discarded. Using harpoons to impale the surface feeding animals, and gill nets to entangle and drown them, the rays were easy targets and their numbers soon began to plummet. The Sea of Cortez - One of the First Targeted Mobulid FisheriesĪmong the first countries to commercially fish their manta population was Mexico, when in the early 1980’s fishermen in the Sea of Cortez switched from subsistence and bycatch fishing of the locally abundant oceanic manta and devil ray species to a directed target fishery. Diminishing stocks drive a lucrative trade (often illegal) to hunt down, trade in, and consume the dwindling populations of these endangered species. As a result, commercial and artisanal fishermen have mostly avoided fishing for these cartilaginous animals in the past centuries, instead concentrating their efforts to fish for the ‘tastiest’ species in our oceans. However, as stocks of our sea’s most plentiful and desirable species have become dramatically depleted, fishermen and nations have turned from the occasional artisanal consumption of mobulids for food, to commercial fisheries for their flesh and to sell their dried branchial gill filaments (known as 'gill plates') as an increasingly sought after ingredient in some Asian medicines. It is often a sad fact of human nature that the more endangered a wild animal becomes, the greater our desire to possess or consume it. In general, the flesh of all sharks and rays is not considered as good to eat as that of bony fishes, such as cod, herring, tuna, groupers, billfishes, etc.
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