With new strategies inspired by collaboration with the world’s foremost sawfish experts, Nick Dulvy, a Canada Research chair at SFU, hopes to save this once-abundant breed of rays from extinction.

Sawfish are shark-like rays distinguished by a long snout called a rostrum filled with ‘teeth’ that resembles a saw. Although the ‘teeth’ on the snout are not, in fact, teeth, the sawfish uses them to stun its prey and ward off predators or divers.

However, the very weapon that helps the sawfish thrive is among the reasons they face possible extinction. The rostrum can get caught accidentally in fishing nets, and this often proves fatal for the sawfish.

Dulvy’s report, “Sawfish: A Global Strategy for Conservation,” states that sawfish “are entirely gone from 21 countries” and could be extinct in 42 out of their 92 “former range countries.” 

Habitat destruction and overfishing also threaten the species. “One path to extinction that is particularly prevalent in the ocean is that if you fish something hard enough, the population will decline, and if you do not manage that decline then it is inevitable that the decline will continue until the species [goes] extinct,” explained Dulvy.

Despite the alarming rate by which sawfish are disappearing, Dulvy, with the Shark Specialist Group (SSG) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has come up with a strategy to reverse the decline in sawfish.

According to the official press release, the strategy calls for “national and regional actions to prohibit intentional killing of sawfish, minimize mortality of accidental catches, protect sawfish habitats, and ensure effective enforcement of such safeguards.” The report also outlines important areas for improvement, which include effective communications, capacity building, strategic research, responsible husbandry, and fundraising.

For Dulvy, implementing ways to protect sawfish and following through on those initiatives is crucial. “It’s one thing to have laws and legislation to do that but it’s another thing to act upon the laws and legislation,” Dulvy elaborated. “What we need to do is to ensure there are people who can do that. To some degree, you need the education and the awareness raising before policy makers even realize they have to produce laws.”

Effective training is yet another hurdle the industry needs to overcome. “At the moment there are very few people out there in the world who are actually capable of conserving sawfish, or any other marine fish for that matter,” said Dulvy.

Beyond the sawfish population, Dulvy argues that overfishing is harmful to fisheries themselves. He said, “We are overfishing the world’s oceans. That causes huge problems, not just for sawfishes and biodiversity, but overfishing the world’s oceans [means that oceans] don’t generate as much fish for food as they could be doing.”

Dulvy stated that the project’s goal is not only to conserve sawfish, but to help fisheries as well: “We’re not just in this game to save five wonderfully arcane species; we’re in this game to make the world’s fisheries more sustainable, more profitable and better able to support the food needs of coastal peoples.”