![]() ![]() This double whammy has led to the near eradication of wedgefish worldwide. Wedgefish’s pointy snouts are easily snagged in fishing nets, so they’re also a frequent, unintended casualty of commercial fisheries. Fetching up to $1,000 per kilo, wedgefish’s spiny fin meat is some of the most highly sought in this ecocidal economy because it’s perfect for shark fin soup, a delicacy favored by wealthy East Asian seafood connoisseurs. Along with their cousins, sawfish and guitarfish, wedgefish are among the most endangered animals in the sea, thanks largely to fishers who supply the shark fin trade. The clown wedgefish is the runt of the 11 known species, about as long as a baseball bat. They look like sharks that swam head first into a panini press, with flat faces and sharkish tails. “This thing’s dust,” Kyne thinks, feeling defeated as he writes the somber news in a draft assessment of the global conservation status of wedgefish species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Kyne, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University in Australia who studies wedgefish, has worked only with preserved specimens of the spotted sea creature. ![]() ![]() No scientist has seen signs of the critically endangered Rhynchobatus cooki, or clown wedgefish, since a dead one turned up at a fish market in 1996. Peter Kyne sits down at his desk to write a eulogy for a fish he’s never met. This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. How do you find an elusive animal that most people have never even seen dead in a fish market? Matthew McDavitt, above, knows how. ![]()
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