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The Facts
On Saturday, the Ecuadoran national park announced that a team of researchers had discovered a nursery of endangered hammerheads off Isabela Island in Ecuador's Galapagos archipelago.
The researchers, who had previously identified two more locations with similar characteristics on nearby islands as part of the park's Shark Monitoring Program, will return to the nurseries every month to keep track of the young shark population and map their migration routes.
The Spin
Narrative A
The Galapagos has become a genetic bank to reseed extinct marine ecosystems. Identifying and protecting the habitats of juvenile sharks matters because young sharks are often the most vulnerable, and their survival is vital to the future of their species. Nonetheless, with the rate at which predators catch and kill the sharks, the nurseries must be protected when they are discovered. It's simple: protecting the sharks protects the ocean and protecting the ocean protects the planet.
Narrative B
Any effort to conserve and preserve the hammerhead shark nurseries must support small-scale fishers' legitimate rights and welfare. Strict regulations protecting endangered sharks could negatively impact the livelihoods of locals — who often catch the species unintentionally — by reducing their income and eliminating a key source of food. Fishery-led conservation, which could include a fair compensation scheme, can have a meaningful effect on fisher behavior and marine conservation globally.
