Marine biologist Daniel Fernando has been surveying Sri Lanka’s fishing industry for over two years. Today, he is in the western coastal town of Negombo, at one of the country’s busiest fish markets. He is passionate about saving manta and mobula rays from extinction. Fernando carefully examines a pile of rays on the pier, collecting DNA samples for population studies.
Researchers estimate that fisheries the world over net more than 100,000 such rays a year, mostly in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. Many catches remain undocumented. Until recent years, most fishermen avoided them. Their meat is cheap and they damage fishing nets when entangled.
But that has changed. The burgeoning demand for their gill plates in Chinese medicine – said to cleanse human blood of toxins – has increased fishing pressure worldwide, turning subsistence fishery into a commercial export industry. Read the full article