Tagging the Sharks That Commute Between Two Countries

Cocos Island and the Galápagos are both strictly protected, but the hammerheads, whale sharks, turtles and rays that use them were being caught in the unprotected water between — including the seamounts that act as waypoints on the crossing. MigraMar, a network of researchers across Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Panama, Colombia and the United States, has tracked 1,519 individual animals with satellite and acoustic tags — 642 hammerhead sharks, 600 other sharks, 113 whale sharks, 59 manta rays, 68 bony fishes and 37 sea turtles — turning a suspected migration into mapped, defensible evidence. Its MigraVia expeditions in 2018 and 2021 surveyed six sites along the route, including oceanic seamounts. The data underpinned the Cocos-Galapagos Swimway, a 240,000 square kilometre corridor, and the wider Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor announced by Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama in 2021; protected area in the region grew roughly fourfold, from 156,000 square kilometres in 2010 to 630,000 in 2022.