Shark Conservation in Panama: Critically Endangered Hammerheads and the Banco Volcán Expansion

Why sharks are a conservation problem

Sharks are unusually vulnerable to overfishing for a reason rooted in their biology. Most shark species grow slowly, mature late, and produce relatively few young, a life-history strategy that works well over evolutionary time but is catastrophic when combined with industrial fishing pressure, because a population fished faster than it can reproduce collapses and then recovers, if at all, over decades. That vulnerability is why so many once-common shark species now sit in the most threatened IUCN categories, and why sharks have become a central focus of international marine conservation.

Two international frameworks govern their protection. The IUCN Red List rates species’ extinction risk on a scale from Least Concern through to Critically Endangered, and a Critically Endangered rating is the most severe category for a species still extant in the wild. It means the species faces an extremely high risk of extinction. CITES, the convention on international trade in endangered species, controls commerce in listed species through its appendices; sharks listed on CITES Appendix II are those in which international trade must be controlled to avoid over-exploitation. Both frameworks matter: the IUCN rating describes the biological risk, and the CITES listing provides the trade-control response. The IUCN status for the three sharks below is sourced directly from the IUCN Red List assessments (Rigby et al. 2019)^[3][4][5]; the CITES Appendix II listings are stable and well-attested.

The scalloped hammerhead

The scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) is one of the iconic, and one of the most threatened, large sharks. Its distinctive hammer-shaped head, the cephalofoil, is the feature that makes it unmistakable, and the same schooling behaviour that makes it spectacular to encounter in the water makes it vulnerable to fishing, because entire aggregations can be taken at once. The species is assessed as Critically Endangered (criterion A2) on the IUCN Red List^[3] and is listed under CITES Appendix II^[1].

The scalloped hammerhead is one of the three critically endangered sharks named in the Banco Volcán protected-area framework, the others being the great hammerhead and the oceanic whitetip^[2]. Hammerhead fins are among the most valued in the international fin trade, which is the economic pressure driving the species’ decline and the reason the CITES Appendix II listing, with its trade controls, is the relevant international response.

The oceanic whitetip

The oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus) is the other flagship threatened shark in Panamanian waters. Once one of the most abundant large oceanic sharks in the world, it has undergone steep population declines and is now classified, like the scalloped hammerhead, as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List (Rigby et al. 2019)^[5], with a CITES Appendix II listing attested by the same source^[5]. It is the third of the critically endangered sharks protected under the Banco Volcán framework^[2].

The oceanic whitetip’s decline is a textbook case of the broad biological problem. As an open-ocean, wide-ranging shark, it is hard to protect with nearshore marine parks, because it spends its life in international and high-seas waters where jurisdiction is fragmented. That range biology is exactly why the protection response has to be at the scale of large offshore protected zones and international trade controls, rather than at the scale of a single reef or bay.

Panama’s response: the Banco Volcán expansion

The reason a page on shark conservation belongs in a Panama guide is that the country has made one of the most significant recent spatial commitments to shark protection anywhere in the eastern tropical Pacific. The 2023 expansion of the Banco Volcán Marine Protected Area, which took the zone from roughly 14,200 km² to over 90,000 km², was documented as protecting an area hosting around 120 pelagic fish species, including the three critically endangered sharks (scalloped hammerhead, great hammerhead, and oceanic whitetip) and five endangered species such as the whale shark, the mako, two deep-sea sharks, and the giant oceanic manta ray^[2]. The marine-protected-areas page covers the expansion and the broader MPA network in full.

The shark significance of that expansion is the spatial argument. Pelagic sharks like the scalloped hammerhead and oceanic whitetip move across enormous distances, so protecting them requires protected space at a matching scale. A 90,000 km² offshore zone is the kind of area that begins to cover a meaningful fraction of a pelagic shark’s range, which is why the Banco Volcán expansion matters for sharks specifically and not only for the headline percentage of ocean protected.

The great hammerhead

The three-shark list in the Banco Volcán framework (scalloped hammerhead, great hammerhead, oceanic whitetip) names the great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) as a critically endangered species the expansion protects^[2]. Its formal status is now sourced directly: the great hammerhead is assessed as Critically Endangered (criterion A2) on the IUCN Red List, in the 2019 assessment by Rigby et al.^[4], the same assessment programme that classified the scalloped hammerhead and oceanic whitetip. All three CR sharks in the Banco Volcán framework therefore carry primary IUCN citations, not just inclusion in the protected-species list.

CITES Appendix II and the fin trade

The CITES Appendix II listing shared by the scalloped hammerhead and the oceanic whitetip is worth a moment, because it is the international mechanism that targets the economic driver of the decline. Appendix II does not ban trade outright (that is Appendix I); it requires that international trade be controlled through permits and shown to be sustainable. For sharks, the relevant trade is overwhelmingly in fins, which move through international markets at prices that have driven the overfishing. The Appendix II listings bring those species’ products under CITES scrutiny at borders, which is the practical tool, alongside the spatial protection of places like Banco Volcán, for slowing the decline. Panama’s role in the CITES framework, as a range state for these species and as the country behind the Banco Volcán expansion, connects the international trade regime to the on-the-water protection.

How to read this as a visitor or supporter

For divers, the shark story in Panama is concentrated around Coiba and the Gulf of Chiriquí, where scalloped hammerhead schools are among the great sights of eastern tropical Pacific diving (see coiba-marine-life and coiba-island). For anyone supporting conservation, shark protection in Panama offers the same clear cause-and-effect as the marine protected area story generally: the Banco Volcán expansion is a concrete, measurable commitment that directly serves the country’s most threatened sharks. And for anyone trying to understand why Critically Endangered sharks still need defending in a country that protects more than half its ocean, the answer is the combination of the species’ biology (slow to recover), the economic pressure (the fin trade), and the reality that protection on paper, as the IUCN’s Significant Concern outlook on Coiba shows, does not automatically equal protection in the water.

Why sharks collapse and recover so slowly

The vulnerability of sharks to overfishing is a direct consequence of their life history, and understanding that biology is the key to understanding why three of the species in Panamanian waters sit in the most severe IUCN category. Most large sharks grow slowly, take many years to reach reproductive age, and produce relatively few young over long intervals, a strategy that evolved for a stable, long-lived animal at the top of the food chain and that works perfectly under natural mortality. Under industrial fishing pressure, that same strategy becomes a trap: a population that is fished faster than it reproduces will collapse, and once collapsed, the slow growth and late maturity that characterise sharks mean recovery, if it happens at all, takes decades. That is why a species like the oceanic whitetip, once among the most abundant large oceanic sharks, could decline to Critically Endangered status within a single human generation.

This biology is also why the usual tools of fisheries management, designed for fast-reproducing fish, work poorly for sharks. A tuna population can sustain substantial fishing pressure because it reproduces quickly enough to replace losses; a shark population under the same pressure will simply disappear, because it cannot replace what is removed fast enough. The implication for conservation is that sharks require more precautionary protection than most fished species: lower catch limits where fishing is permitted, full protection where it is not, and international trade controls on the products (overwhelmingly fins) that drive the most economically damaging pressure. The CITES Appendix II listings on the scalloped hammerhead and the oceanic whitetip are the trade-control half of that response; the spatial protection of the Banco Volcán zone is the no-fishing half.

Why sharks need protection at oceanic scale

The spatial logic of shark conservation is different from that of most terrestrial species, and it is driven by the sheer scale of pelagic movement. A forest-dependent species can be protected by a park large enough to hold its home range; a scalloped hammerhead or an oceanic whitetip ranges across ocean basins, so no single park, however large, can cover the full territory it uses. Protecting such a species requires protected space at an oceanic scale, which is why the 2023 Banco Volcán expansion, taking the protected zone from roughly 14,200 km² to over 90,000 km², matters for sharks specifically and not only for the headline percentage of ocean protected. A 90,000 km² offshore zone begins to cover a meaningful fraction of a pelagic shark’s range, which a nearshore park never could.

The deeper point is that pelagic shark conservation depends on networks of large protected areas distributed across the species’ migratory routes, which is exactly the logic of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor. Coiba’s protected waters connect, through that corridor, to the protected zones around Coco, Malpelo, Gorgona, and the Galápagos, a chain of large marine protected areas across four countries that, together, begin to cover the oceanic scale at which pelagic sharks actually live. No single node in that chain is sufficient on its own, but the network, if it is enforced, is the spatial structure that wide-ranging sharks need. Panama’s contribution, the Banco Volcán expansion and the Coiba node, is one piece of that transnational network, and its effectiveness for sharks depends as much on what the other range states do as on what Panama does alone.

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Last reviewed: 2026-07-03