Quimica 10ma Edición - Raymond Chang

As a CITES implementation for sharks and rays, Indonesia have taken an action to fully protect Sawfish, Whale shark, and Manta Rays and enforce a ban export for hammerhead, oceanic whitetip and silky sharks. Indonesia also implementing their law enforcement on illegal shark and ray trade via investigation and prosecution. However, there is still challenges, for example in Lamakera, Southern Indonesia, manta rays are still hunted by the local communities as one of their cultural practice. Another challenge is the fact most of these species is still legal to be caught and traded. Species like hammerhead, cowboy and silky shark are still legal to be caught and only become illegal once it is exported to another country. And since the market for these species is high in price, demand and stock; this condition can potentially encourage illegal trades. Especially when it is comes to body parts, visual inspection on trading species are very difficult with relatively low accuracy. And because of this gap in management, legal and illegal trade are closely linked and sometimes hard to tell apart. This problem can be tackled by developing a better traceability system and demand reduction effort. For traceability, the efforts needed to take is to strengthen the data and information on sharks and ray landing sites. Secondly, is to introduce more accurate and reliable tool for identifying the traded products, for example a compact genetic identification approach. For demand reduction, the effort needed to take is to spread a public awareness to consumers while providing alternative livelihood for coastal communities.