Imagine a tropical island , the distant position of which has leave it relatively untouched by mankind . Animals , both sublunary and marine , flourish here . Pollution does n’t subsist and ecosystems are flourish .

If it fathom too good to be honest , well , that ’s because it sort of is .

1000 of miles aside from any major land raft , theChagos archipelagowas trust to be one of those pristine and untouched places , but a new study bring out inScience Advancessuggests otherwise .

Declining shark population show that even in one of the most distant coral reef systems on the planet , human race is leaving its mark .

Humans have been chatter the archipelago around it for hundreds of years and have maintain records of Pisces the Fishes and shark universe appraisal , which let in the first scientific sketch that took berth here in 1948 , pick up records going back 50 years , and surveys conducted by aqualung plunger in the 1970s . researcher used this data to predict what shark populations should have been without human impact .

The study depict the shark were n’t as abundant as they were originally believed to be . Of two rife sharks , there were an estimated 571,310 gray Witwatersrand sharks and almost 32,000 silvertip sharks   – 93 pct lower than the betoken level .

Researchers say it stand for this area has been exploited longer and more intensely than antecedently thought , and it is almost certainly because of overfishing .

More thanhalfof the world ’s waters are being commercially angle ,   and researchers say it ’s likely this overfishing is depleting shark population , and take away an ecosystem ’s dominant coinage can have a lasting impact . Since shark do n’t reproduce in large numbers and it takes them a farsighted time to mature , when their populations correct they can have a more unmanageable sentence bouncing back .

Every year humans kill an estimated100 million shark ,   and illegal shark fishing is thought to go on globally , even in marinesanctuaries and reserves .

It come out even the most remote animals ca n’t head for the hills human ’s fixation with plastics . Researchers say they constitute garbage throughout the Rand . That ’s no surprisal deliberate plastic is establish in most everybody of waterand on most everycontinent .

The researchers say this is an important object lesson in how looks can be deceiving .