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With no recent sightings of sawfish,-by Polita Glynn and Nathan Fedrizzi Source:Dailynews In the waters off Sri Lanka, the number of sawfish, a rare and globally threatened group of marine rays, has declined so much that the animal is now considered “functionally extinct.” That finding, from a study by Pew marine fellow Rima Jabado in the August 2021 issue of the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, has spurred lawmakers to explore measures to protect the remaining sawfish in the country. Jabado and her colleagues at Blue Resources Trust, a nongovernmental organisation in Sri Lanka, interviewed more than 300 fishers and fish traders to investigate the distribution, species diversity, and health of Sri Lanka’s sawfish populations. Named for their saw-like snouts, sawfish are a type of ray whose skeleton is made primarily of cartilage. And like many shark and ray species, these animals are targeted for their fins, which ...