Ramón Bonfil: Dr. Shark

Ramón Bonfil: Dr. Shark

Hooked by great white sharks

Although Ramón Bonfil was born in Mexico City, he fell in love with the sea pretty early in life. At the age of eight he and his family moved to the coastal city of Coatzacoalcos along the Gulf of Mexico, where he lived two blocks from the beach, - that was his doom. Fond of the sea and everything that swims in it he later discovered that there was a discipline called marine biology. That is exactly what he studied at the University of Baja California. After graduation he spent five years working for the National Fisheries Institute in Mexico where he began studying sharks. He was immediately hooked by this mysterious fish! Since that time Ramón has dedicated his life to understanding and saving sharks.

Ramón obtained his Master’s degree at the University of Wales in Britain with a study of the age, growth and reproduction of silky sharks and went on to get his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia where he investigated the status, assessment and management of shark fisheries. He was a visiting scientist at the Far Sea Fisheries Research Institute of Japan and at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome. He has been a consultant to FAO on several occasions and with this organization he published the first review of shark fisheries of the world – now a classic – as well as an identification guide for sharks and rays of the Red Sea, and was scientific editor for the updated version of the Catalogue of Sharks of the World. He recently co-edited a manual for Elasmobranch Fisheries Management Techniques for APEC. Ramon is an internationally recognized shark expert; he serves at the Conservation Committee of the American Elasmobranch Society and the Advisory Panel for the Highly Migratory Fishes of the US National Marine Fisheries Service, is a US Delegate to the Working Group of Elasmobranch Fishes of ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea) and since 1992 he is a member of the World Conservation Union´s Shark Specialist Group.

As a conservation scientist with a clear focus in sharks he worked with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) from 2001 to 2005. There he was the founder and leader of several research and policy initiatives to help to bring the great white shark back from the brink of extinction. He set up the first satellite-tagging studies of white sharks in South Africa and New Zealand to try to find out how they use different marine habitats, where they migrate to and where their critical mating and breeding grounds are.

Currently Ramon works as an independent shark researcher and consultant.