The concern for the smoothtooth blacktip’s conservation status is “the same as for any sharks or rays,” said Gavin Naylor, a professor of biology at the College of Charleston, Medical University of South Carolina, who also worked on the 2011 study.
“They are what we call K selected animals, meaning they are long lived and have few pups, and are thus especially vulnerable to fishing pressures,” said Naylor. “Such animals take a long time to recover from overfishing and are particularly prone to extirpation,” extinction from a local area. And, he points out, “Local extirpation leads to global extirpation when individual animals move long distances, as sharks generally do.”
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