WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity reached a legal agreement with NOAA Fisheries today requiring the agency to decide by Aug. 12 whether the smalltail shark warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act. The sharks live in nearshore waters of the western Atlantic Ocean from Brazil to the northern Gulf of Mexico.

“Smalltail sharks need swift action to bring them back from the brink of extinction, and I’m hopeful this agreement makes that happen,” said Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Sharks have roamed our shores for millions of years. It’d be tragic to let smalltail sharks disappear forever from the Gulf of Mexico and their entire habitat because of bureaucratic delays.”

Today’s agreement resolves a February 2025 Center lawsuit over the agency’s failure to reach a decision by October 2023 as legally required.

In October 2022 the Center petitioned to list smalltail sharks as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, designate critical habitat and issue protections for species similar in appearance. In May 2023 NOAA Fisheries found that the sharks could warrant protection.

The global smalltail shark population has declined by more than 80% in the past 27 years, or just three generations. In the area where most of the sharks live, off the coast of Brazil, the population has declined by more than 90%.

Overfishing primarily drives the sharks’ decline, with insufficient or nonexistent regulations in many regions. The sharks are targeted by fishermen and caught accidentally as bycatch. Their meat is consumed locally and their fins are traded globally. As a tropical and subtropical species that lives in shallow, coastal areas, smalltail sharks are also threatened by climate change, habitat degradation and exposure to contamination.

Sharks, rays and chimeras first evolved around 420 million years ago and have survived at least five mass extinctions. Yet today more than one-third are threatened with global extinction. One shark species believed to be extinct is closely related to smalltail sharks — the “lost shark,” also called “the false smalltail shark” — highlighting the smalltail’s susceptibility to extinction.