Brian HoweyPeter Kyne sits down at his desk to write a eulogy for a fish he’s never met. It’s summer 2019. 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. Kyne, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University in Australia who studies wedgefish, has worked only with preserved specimens of the spotted sea creature. “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.
Wedgefish are a type of ray. They look like sharks that swam head first into a panini press, with flat faces and sharkish tails. The clown wedgefish is the runt of the 11 known species, about as long as a baseball bat. 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. Fetching up to US $1,000 per kilogram, 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.
Wedgefish’s pointy snouts are easily snagged in fishing nets, so they’re also a frequent, unintended casualty of other commercial fisheries. This double whammy has led to the near eradication of wedgefish worldwide. Nine species are critically endangered. Kyne is about to add an extinction to that list.
Just hours before submitting the final assessment, though, Kyne learns that a dead clown wedgefish has just shown up at a Singapore fish market. Relieved, he and his colleagues revise their work. But the swift action necessary to help the species won’t be possible without more information. The scientists don’t even know the critter’s habitat requirements. Somehow, they must find out where the last holdouts live.
Kyne mentions the problem in a Zoom meeting about wedgefish conservation. Luckily for Kyne, his friend Matthew McDavitt is among the attendees. McDavitt is an amateur academic well versed in an emerging research methodology that turns the virtual sea of social media posts into information scientists can use to track the world’s rarest species. His curiosity ignited, McDavitt gets to work. Kyne doesn’t know it yet, but the hunt for the clown wedgefish is on.
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