A future for people, sharks and our seas: meet our 2025 Keystone Grant project leaders
Never before has there been such urgency that underscores the work that we do to secure the sustainability of livelihoods around the earth’s oceans. The challenges are many and multiplying, but as Dr Jane Goodall says,
If there’s one thing that can imbue your start to 2025 with hopeful inspiration, it’s this: despite the depressing headlines and doomscrolling, we are still finding determined people on this planet who are working harder than ever to find ways to address our climate and biodiversity crises. Our cohort of 2025 keystone grant project leaders are ensuring that we carve out a future that not only is kinder to people and the planet and more humane as we work to conserve endangered species, but also puts the equity and dignity of communities impacted by climate and wildlife crises first.
Alfonsina is filling in the gaps in knowledge that we have for the life history of the freckled guitarfish throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Spanning sampling sites in both the USA and Mexico, she is estimating age, growth and reproductive parameters: all baseline life-history information that is needed to manage these rays effectively.
Alifa wants to integrate science with human rights principles, creating marine protected areas that are built on social fairness and community involvement and promote sustainable use. She will pilot marine-managed areas that focus on conserving sharks and rays in coastal Bangladesh.
In a country where any information about sharks and rays is critically absent, Ana Lúcia is documenting baseline biodiversity information at landing sites like Namibe, Benguela and Luanda in Angola.
Ana Lúcia Furtado Soares at one of her research sites. She will be characterising small-scale fisheries, assessing the status of shark fisheries, collecting biological data and investigating trade networks. Photo © Angola Elasmo Project
Resource challenges have forced Ana to embrace innovative education initiatives, as she aims to increase public understanding of the importance of sharks and rays in Panama, Belize and Honduras and to engage communities into becoming ocean stewards.
Bigeyo is exploring the biology and conservation needs of, and threats to, wedgefish and guitarfish species in Tanzania to promote sustainable fishing practices and conserve these Critically Endangered species and their habitat.
Rhino rays, manta and devil rays and hammerhead sharks all show signs of localised commercial extinctions along the Kenyan coast. Boaz is collecting the data on these species that will be needed to aid Kenya Fisheries Services’ National Plan of Action for Sharks.
To combat bycatch in Colombia’s Caribbean artisanal fisheries, Carlos is identifying fishing gear and locations with high skate and ray bycatch, testing tools to modify gear and exploring the shifting of fishing grounds or reduction of gear usage in high bycatch areas.
Gustav is using the Greenland shark and the sailray as indicator species for biodiversity hotspots in Skagerrak, where interest in deep-sea exploitation is rising and no marine protected areas protect deep-sea habitats and species.
Sawfish are among the most threatened vertebrates on the planet, and some regions of Australia are where the last viable populations of dwarf and green sawfish remain. But Jack wants to know if these populations are genetically healthy and what is the risk of inbreeding when numbers have dwindled drastically, globally and locally?
The Seychelles Government wants to protect 10 threatened elasmobranch species caught in the artisanal fishery. John is gathering catch data and comparing it with the catch database from before the law change, assessing the legislation’s impact on catch, recommending ways to optimise it and building national capacity for its monitoring and enforcement.
Jorge is interested in the life below 200 metres (656 feet), where the largest fish biomass on earth inhabits mesopelagic waters down to a depth of 1,000 metres (3,280 feet). He’s developing new animal-borne tags with video cameras and sensors to study the ocean’s twilight zone affordably and effectively.
Every night, communities of fish migrate from the meso-pelagic waters into shallower waters. This is essential for the cycling of nutrients and carbon, and many sharks and rays rely on meso-pelagic prey. Jorge Fontes wants to understand the extent of this reliance, and what impact fishing and climate change will have on these predators and their prey. Photo © Jorge Fontes
Kara is characterising brain morphology from an existing collection of smalltooth sawfish, using advanced 3D bio-imaging to predict behavioural and sensory shifts throughout life.
Lara is focusing on Cabo Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe to identify aggregation hotspots and migratory routes of whale sharks to assess their risk of collisions with shipping. By pinpointing priority conservation zones, she hopes to inform policy changes and establish safe corridors.
Lotte is tracking chimaeras in Norwegian waters. She wants to identify whether they exhibit resident or migratory behaviour, understand social interactions and assess population structure, all to improve understanding of chimaeras and help protect them and their key habitats.
Maria has collaborated with local communities to secure a 10-square-kilometre (3.86-square-mile) no-take zone around a population of Critically Endangered scalloped bonnetheads in Colombia. She will delineate the new no-take zone using moorings with marker buoys and track the fine-scale movements of the sharks to evaluate their level of protection.
Mina wants to understand the economic cost of and attitudes to depredation, and how depredation impacts people’s mindsets about sharks and the Maldives shark sanctuary.
The Maldives is one of only 17 shark sanctuaries worldwide, and its hard-won conservation successes have kept it one of the most diverse regions for sharks and rays. But with success comes a new cost: shark population recoveries have brought conflict with fishers, who lose some of their catch to sharks in what is termed depredation. Photo © Mina Hatayama
Mohsen is looking to the future, comparing the life-history traits of coastal tropical elasmobranch populations between the Gulf of Oman (representing present-day tropical seas) and the Persian Gulf (mirroring future climate conditions expected by the end of the century) to investigate how ocean warming could impact their vulnerability to overfishing.
Nicolas is on a mission not only to determine the characteristics of essential habitats needed for feeding, reproduction and shelter in three threatened hammerhead species (great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, winghead) across northern Australia, but also to identify similar habitats across their global distribution.
Rodrigo is testing whether Brazilian guitarfish exposed to anthropogenic pressures such as pollution and fishing in the south-western Atlantic express a greater number of stress-adaptation-related genes compared to individuals from protected areas.
Sam wants to help understand what’s driving inshore shark movements at Ascension Island, where more frequent encounters with sharks (primarily Galápagos and silky sharks) in shallow coastal waters have created conflicts with human ocean users such as fishers and divers. He aims to improve the ability to predict, explain or respond to future human–shark interactions.
Stella’s tracking research has found that whale sharks appear to be using Nosy Be’s waters more than initially imagined. She now wants to know if juvenile whale sharks are using the area in Madagascar year-round.
Tom wants to understand how and where porbeagles are reproducing in the north-eastern Atlantic. He’s using ultrasonography and steroid hormone concentrations to assess if females are pregnant, and then bio-logging to track their movement patterns.