In Senegal, artisanal fishing kills a surprising number of sharks and rays, according to a new study — so many, it probably eclipses industrial fishing, which is more commonly blamed for the species’ decline.
The study was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution in March. Researchers analyzed landings of sharks, rays and guitarfish at two major artisanal fishery processing sites, Kafountine and Elinkine, in southern Senegal’s Casamance region between June 2021 and July 2022. Most of the catches comprised species at risk of extinction, and many were traded abroad without obligatory export permits, the study found.
While the researchers directly counted more than 100,000 harvested sharks, rays and guitarfishes, they estimated the actual number to be at least 174,000, as many were stacked or piled together and couldn’t be accurately counted. This number was surprisingly high, according to lead author Rima Jabado, chair of the Shark Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. Jabado is also the founder of the Elasmo Project, a United Arab Emirates-based nonprofit that focuses on shark and ray conservation.
“The study should be read as evidence of a serious problem, not as a ceiling on the true scale of exploitation,” Jabado told Mongabay in an email, adding the findings are conservative. Since the researchers covered only two out of dozens of landing sites in the country, the total number of rays and sharks caught and processed annually could be 1.7 million to 3.5 million, the study estimates.
Scientists and environmental organizations have long raised concerns about the impacts of industrial fishing on marine life in West Africa, mostly by foreign trawlers operating offshore. However, while these operations are often underreported and poorly regulated, they are generally more visible and subject to more monitoring than artisanal fisheries, so their overall impact is easier to assess.
As the two sites analyzed in the study represent only a fraction of the countrywide landings, the authors conclude that artisanal take of sharks and rays likely exceeds industrial exploitation of the species in Senegal.
“In the global tropics artisanal take can be as high or higher than that from industrial fisheries, and can be the key driver of declines that are leading us rapidly to extinctions,” Luke Warwick, senior director for threatened marine species conservation at the U.S.-based NGO Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay via email. Warwick, who wasn’t involved in the study, added that artisanal fishing has already led to the disappearance of sawfish from large parts of West Africa.
While the study showed rays dominated catches by number, guitarfishes made up most of the weight. Sharks, numbering almost 15,000 individuals, made up a smaller percentage of the landings. Jabado noted that rays are often overlooked in discussions about overfishing. “As a group, [rays] are more threatened than sharks and we need to be considering them more in any conservation/bycatch mitigation actions.”
Sharks and rays are the second-most endangered vertebrate group, after amphibians, with an estimated 37% of all species currently threatened with extinction, according to the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, mostly due to overfishing. Globally, overfishing has reduced shark and ray populations by half since 1970, researchers estimate, but local declines have been even more dramatic, especially in parts of West Africa.
The new study confirms this trend. A high proportion of landings processed at the two sites — 82.6% of the total biomass — were species threatened with extinction. These included the critically endangered blackchin guitarfish (Glaucostegus cemiculus), scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) and Lusitanian cownose ray (Rhinoptera marginata), as well as the endangered spiny devil ray (Mobula mobular).
These concerns are not unique to Senegal, Jabado said, but rather illustrate an ongoing crisis of these species in the region, if not the world. “Sharks and rays are being exploited in ways that remain difficult to monitor, especially in artisanal systems, even though many of these species are highly vulnerable and increasingly regulated internationally,” she said.
It wasn’t clear where the species processed at the two landing sites ultimately ended up. Jabado, who has studied the region’s sharks and rays for years, said multiple trade chains operate simultaneously.
“One is a regional trade in processed meat which is dried or smoked depending on whether it is consumed locally or exported,” she said, adding that this trade is a key driver of shark, ray and guitarfish harvests in Senegal and is particularly poorly documented and regulated. “Another is an international trade that is in some instances more visible in official records, particularly for fins that are exported to Asia.”
Study co-author Luc Badji, a Senegalese marine scientist with the Dubai-based nonprofit Elasmo Project, told Mongabay that at Elinkine and Kafountine, the regional dried-meat trade consists mostly of exports to Ghana via truck, and from there also to Nigeria.
For fins, the process is different and involves multiple intermediaries, “including fish traders based at the fishing port, exporters (often based in Gambia) who pack them into containers and ship them to recipients in China,” Badji said in a written response. Others are so-called “fish traders-investors,” also based in surrounding countries, who finance some fishing operations and receive the entire catch of the fishers they pay, Badji said.
Small-scale fisheries are a pillar for food security in communities along West Africa’s coast, which complicates the issue. Warwick said the exploitation of sharks and rays by artisanal fishers is more difficult to regulate than industrial exploitation, as artisanal fisheries are a livelihood source for thousands of households in Senegal, where fish makes up more than two thirds of the population’s animal protein intake.
Badji, who spent a significant amount of time speaking to workers at the two processing sites, said Senegalese fishers had little awareness of the declining shark and ray numbers, but that because of trade routes, Ghanaian fishers had more.
To better understand and regulate the exploitation of sharks, rays and guitarfish, more research is needed to gather species-level landings data, regularly monitor landing and processing sites, and trace where products go after landing, Jabado said.
“If species are listed under CITES, there must be the capacity to identify them correctly, issue permits appropriately and demonstrate that trade is legal and non-detrimental to the species in the wild,” Jabado said, referring to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). More than three-quarters of the total biomass documented in the study consisted of species listed in the convention’s appendices, meaning they require permits and documentation to be traded internationally.
More than 70 additional shark and ray species were added to CITES Appendix II at the convention’s last global summit in November 2025. Exports from Kafountine and Elinkine were not accompanied by permits in the CITES Trade Database, leading the researchers to conclude that most of the trade goes unreported.
