Sharks once were plentiful in Madagascar’s waters, but a spike in demand for shark fins dating to the 1980s has led to heavy exploitation and a reduction in the fishes’ abundance and size.Madagascar has no national laws that specifically protect sharks. In June, though, the country released a new national plan for the sustainable management of sharks and rays.The plan calls for a shark trade surveillance program, a crackdown on illegal industrial fishing, more “no-take” zones, and a concerted effort to collect better data.Conservationists welcomed the plan as an important step — provided the country can enforce its provisions. MORONDAVA, Madagascar — When older people on Madagascar’s west coast were children, there were so many sharks that they had to be a bit careful when playing in the water. At the time, local fishers would catch some sharks but had little reason to target them, given the low prices they fetched at market. Then, in the 1980s, China’s rising middle class started eating more shark-fin soup, and fin prices skyrocketed. In Madagascar, as elsewhere, industrial vessels and local fishers alike began chasing sharks, and heavy exploitation has continued ever since. The results have been dire, local people say. Fishers in numerous towns and villages in southwest Madagascar told Mongabay that sizable sharks have become harder and harder to catch. The fishers said they now put in more work, with more selective gear, for less reward. Nirina Arson Ranaivoarivony, who works at a western outpost of Madagascar’s fisheries ministry, has seen the changes firsthand. In the early 1990s, when he worked on an industrial shrimp trawler along the coast, he said there would be 3-to-4-meter (10-to-13-foot) sharks “every time we brought the nets up.” But by the time he left that line of work, in 2002, such large “bycatch” had become far less common. Now he keeps track of shark trade data for the region of Menabe as part of his work for the ministry. “There are far fewer sharks being moved today because there just aren’t many left,” he told Mongabay. “They’ve all been taken out of the ocean.” A Malagasy woman, wearing a traditional sunscreen on her face, sells sharks and other seafood at the market in the city of Morondava. She offered these three little sharks to a reporter for 2,000 ariary, about 50 cents. Image by Edward Carver for Mongabay. In all that time, Madagascar has had no laws that specifically protect sharks. Now, the government may finally be set to take action. In June, the fisheries ministry teamed up with the environment ministry to announce a new national plan for the sustainable management of sharks and rays. The plan, which Mongabay reviewed in draft form, calls for a shark trade surveillance program, a crackdown on illegal industrial fishing, more “no-take” zones, and a concerted effort to collect better data. Conservationists are cautiously optimistic about the initiative. “[I]t is an important step towards the sustainable management and conservation of [sharks and rays],” Nanie Ratsifandrihamanana, the international NGO WWF’s country director, told Mongabay in an email. “However, it needs to be implemented and enforced, otherwise it will have little value. Madagascar has many such plans and strategies and many remain on the shelf unfortunately, so let’s hope this one will have a different fate.”