The capture of three bull sharks in a 2023 gill-net haul from the Vashishti River has exposed how little is known about sharks and rays that use India’s inland and estuarine waters, and why that ignorance increases extinction risk for many species. The Vashishti, which begins in the Western Ghats and drains into the Arabian Sea, supports coastal fishing communities whose routine gear produced footage of fishers hauling a live grey animal from a net followed by two more entangled in the same set. That social media video drew renewed scientific attention to riverine elasmobranchs.
Independent researcher Priyankar Chakraborty said, "This is the first documented report of sharks from the Vashishti River, although historically sharks and rays have been recorded from several major Indian river systems." Chakraborty noted that while well-known species such as the bull shark have relatively solid records, many freshwater- and estuary-associated sharks and rays in India are known only from isolated observations, leaving major gaps in distribution and population data.
Globally, researchers estimate roughly 60 species of sharks and rays spend at least part of their life cycle in inland waters. Michael Grant, a marine biologist at James Cook University, has highlighted that the lack of targeted study continues even though many of those inland-using elasmobranchs rank among the planet’s most threatened vertebrates. The Vashishti incident illustrates a familiar pattern: incidental captures by small-scale fisheries can reveal unexpected species presence, but these sporadic encounters provide insufficient evidence to assess population trends or extinction risk.
For numerous Indian elasmobranchs, the record base remains too thin to design effective conservation measures. Researchers and fishers who reviewed the Vashishti footage say the next step is systematic field surveys and consistent monitoring in rivers and estuaries, converting chance observations into usable data on distribution, abundance and threats. Without that sustained effort, many poorly known sharks and rays will remain effectively invisible to conservation policy and management, even where they co-exist with active coastal fisheries.
