Rising from the depths: recent abundance and distribution trends of the bluntnose sixgill shark (Hexanchus griseus) in the Mediterranean Sea

Sharks play a crucial role in the structure of marine ecosystems but are heavily threatened by overfishing globally. Due to their slow life history traits, even low fishing pressure can have an extreme influence on shark populations. The Mediterranean Sea, which has had historical overexploitation over the course of many centuries, is considered a hotspot for elasmobranchs. One particular species is the bluntnose sixgill shark, Hexanchus griseus, which has recently become more prominent in sightings and landings. Because of its deep range, H. griseus is difficult to study in situ so we used opportunistic data from sharkPulse, a crowd-sourcing platform that collects and organizes image-based shark occurrence records from all over the world, to better understand the abundance and distribution of H. griseus over the past decade. Additionally, we explored historical data to create a baseline of the species abundance starting from the late 1800s. We found that H. griseus underwent a quadratic-shaped change in their abundance where they started out as a rare catch, became increasingly more prominent in fisheries data, and now is declining like many other cartilaginous fishes in the Mediterranean Sea. This work is important because H. griseus is not yet threatened according to the IUCN so research is not heavily focused on this species but the decreasing trend we detected here is concerning while in line with the degree of exploitation of one of the most exploited regions of the world, as well as illustrative of a broader ecological process that will likely occur in many other large marine ecosystems worldwide.