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There are currently 179 sharks fitted with acoustic tracking tags, and when they get within about 500 meters of a receiver, the receiver records the date and time, Skomal said.

Chondrichthyan fishes (including the sharks, rays, skates, and chimaeras) are considered one of the most threatened vertebrate groups by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List (White and Last, 2012; Dulvy et al., 2014). Many chondrichthyans are considered to be ecologically important (reviewed in Heithaus et al., 2008), morphologically diverse and distinctive (Stein et al., 2018), and both culturally (e.g., Dell'Apa et al., 2015) and economically valuable (e.g., Gallagher and Hammerschlag, 2011 for wildlife tourism). Due to the threatened status of many species and the class's diversity of ecological roles, chondrichthyans have often been the focus of considerable research, management, and advocacy attention (reviewed in Simpfendorfer et al., 2011). Given these ecological, cultural, and commercial values, it is important to review and evaluate the extent to which research attention is allocated across taxa and geographic locations, and to assess the degree to which scientific research is appropriately addressing the challenges these fishes face. Here we consider patterns of chondrichthyan research as presented at the annual scientific conference of a professional society dedicated to the research and management of these fishes in order to assess trends in research over time and identify research gaps. These gaps could be used to help with chondrichthyan conservation efforts and to help a professional society to better achieve its stated goal.