Narrowing the niche of shark fin harvests in the global ocean

摘要: In their Comment [1], Raoult et al. challenge our use [2] of species distribution models (SDMs) to inform on the geographical origins of shark fins sold in global markets. This is despite our primary result that shark conservation should prioritize areas within the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs); a conclusion supported by independent biogeographic analyses [3, 4], reconstructed global fishing effort and catch [5, 6], and syntheses of biotelemetry data [7]. Our analysis also responds to calls for new approaches [8, 9], as official fin trade statistics have established flaws [10] that miss what remains illegal or unreported. The main criticism of Raoult et al. is that our SDMs make unrealistic assumptions about fishing and that our SDMs disagree with published expert range maps (‘ERMs’, eg [11, 12]). For four species of sharks, Raoult et al. compare our SDMs to ERMs, claiming the ERMs represent ‘established geographical …