A team of researchers has discovered a third nursery used by scalloped baby hammerhead sharks off an island in Ecuador's Galapagos archipelago, a finding that has been a boon for a species in critical danger of extinction and one that could help protect it.
"It is very important to find these new breeding areas, especially for the hammerhead shark, because it is an iconic species for the Galapagos, one that is critically endangered," Eduardo Espinoza, a ranger at the Galapagos National Park, said in a statement.
After months of traveling around the Galapagos, which comprise 13 major islands, Espinoza and other investigators discovered the nursery off Isabela, the largest of the islands, which are about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from mainland Ecuador, the statement said.
The park said it hopes the research leads the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) "to include these nurseries in the listing of important areas for the conservation of sharks," which now is a special category of protection.
Scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) search for shallow nurseries to raise their pups in protected conditions, the statement said. The shark is an open-water hunter but has been hard hit by commercial fishing to satisfy an appetite in East Asia for its fins.
The park has not offered specific locations for the three nurseries in order to protect the species.
Some of the sharks at the nurseries have been tagged so that scientists can monitor their migration patterns and determine how they interact with sharks elsewhere.
The Galapagos Marine Reserve, one of the largest and most diverse in the world, covers an area of 198,000 square kilometers (76,450 square miles) and contains some 30 species of sharks, among them the blacktip shark, which also has nurseries there.
The concentrations of sharks in its waters are believed to be the densest in the world.
The Galapagos Islands contain flora and fauna found nowhere else. British naturalist Charles Darwin visited in 1835 and developed his theory of evolution based on his findings.