Sarah Viana: Diving through the glass
Channel: Fishbase Sweden
Date: 05/11/2018

Sarah Viana, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, gave a lecture titled "Diving through the glass – the role of natural history collections for inferring biodiversity knowledge and promoting conservation of tropical deep-sea elasmobranch species" at FishBase Symposium 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden, on 15th October, 2018.

ABSTRACT: Deep-sea elasmobranches inhabit upper continental slopes to abyssal basins in all oceans ranging from depths of 200m to over 3000m. Deep-sea species include catsharks, dogfish sharks and skates that together comprise the largest and most diverse taxa within the Chondrichthyan fishes. 
In the South Atlantic and Western Indian Oceans deep-sea sharks and batoids are often targeted in commercial and artisanal fisheries. Severe overfishing in these regions currently jeopardizes the survival rates and upturns the extinction risks of deep-water elasmobranches as fisheries efforts increase in the abyssal realms. Many species thus are likely to remain undescribed with the environmental collapse. Inability to identify taxa is observed in tropical and subtropical countries such as Brazil, Mozambique, Madagascar and South Africa where misidentifications and taxonomic uncertainties are still often met. Deficiency of tropical deep-sea research reveals the taxonomic impediment that includes the decline of scientific expeditions, academic funding and infrastructure, and shortage of experts as major drivers. The impediment thus has shaped the known biodiversity and conservation efforts of tropical elasmobranches. The combined impediment and rarity of some species makes natural history collection data the backbone for inferring classification and promoting management of endangered species in these countries.
In this talk, I will first introduce the diversity of tropical deep-sea elasmobranch and later I will provide evidence of recent outputs in taxonomic research using spurdogs, gulper sharks, roughsharks, ribbontail catsharks and deep-water skates as examples. I will also provide an outline of fish collections in Brazil and discuss initiatives to improve research with deep-sea sharks and batoids.