Nautilus just about extinct in Phl – scientist

MANILA, Philippines - A palaeontologist, who recently joined the University of Adelaide in Australia, is calling for a global ban on the trade of the highly sought-after Nautilus seashell, a major source of which is the Philippines.

“The Nautilus situation we found in the Philippines was mind-boggling,” professor Peter Ward said at ScienceDaily. 

He said, “We found Nautilus at rates of 10-15 per square kilometer in the Great Barrier Reef, but in the Philippines they were 100-200 times more rare.”

The Nautilus, according to Ward, are “virtually extinct in the Bohol Strait and completely gone, as far as we could see, from three other classic fishing locations.”

“The Philippines has been at the center of Nautilus fishing for decades. Now it is just about extinct there. And it is not just Nautilus. In the same environments we found almost no larger fish at all where there should be large schools of many different species,” Ward added.

Ward, a new professor in the Sprigg Geobiology Center of the University of Adelaide, has just returned from the Philippines where he discovered that the Nautilus was close to extinction in sites known for Nautilus fishing, including the Bohol Strait. 

Ward is known for his work and theories on mass extinction in earth’s history. 

Nautilus, often called “living fossils” because they have survived relatively unchanged for millions of years, live at the bottom of the sea at depths of 100-600 meters in deep reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, including Australia.

Ward described the Nautilus as “the ’canary in the coalmine’ of the deep reef environment.”

“It tells us about the health of our deeper reefs where little ecological study is done. When Nautilus is not there, we know that the other fish at those depths are also at risk from overfishing or other environmental factors. We cannot rule out high acidity and warming of these formerly cool, deep waters caused by climate change, and from rising levels of silt caused by nearby deforestation,” he said.

The Nautilus, according to Ward, have survived “every single mass extinction event” over half a billion years, but now they are “being wiped out by humans to sit on a bathroom shelf or as a pretty button on someone’s shirt.” 

Desired for their beautiful shells, Nautilus are heavily fished and traded internationally, commonly seen on websites like eBay fetching as much as A$200, depending on the size.

Ward added that the largest Nautilus come from West Australia and seeing them being sold at eBay and other online sites is a cause of concern for Australians.

Over the past four years, Ward has been conducting a census of Nautilus using special underwater technology developed at University of Queensland. He has studied Nautilus populations at the Great Barrier Reef, Fiji, American Samoa, and the central Philippine islands.