Report Ongoing Collapse of Coral-Reef Shark Populations

Marine ecosystems are suffering severe depletion of apex predators worldwide [1–4]; shark declines are principally due to conservative life-histories and fish-eries overexploitation [5–8]. On coral reefs, sharks are strongly interacting apex predators and play a key role in maintaining healthy reef ecosystems [9– 11]. Despite increasing fishing pressure, reef shark catches are rarely subject to specific limits, with man-agement approaches typically depending upon no-take marine reserves to maintain populations [12–14]. Here, we reveal that this approach is failing by docu-menting an ongoing collapse in two of the most abun-dant reef shark species on the Great Barrier Reef (Aus-tralia). We find an order of magnitude fewer sharks on fished reefs compared to no-entry management zone