Geo answer: Coral Sea

For today’s Geo Quiz we’re swimming with sharks.

Australian conservationists warn that sharks in the waters off Queensland could soon be wiped out.

These are mostly white tip, silver tip and grey reef sharks. And they swim in the sea whose name we’re after for our quiz.

To the west, the sea is bounded by Queensland and to the east, by the New Hebrides and New Caledonia islands.

To the south is the Tasman Sea.

To follow the sharks, marine biologist Richard Fitzpatrick used satellite tagging:

“The species we’re doing research on here are threatened throughout most of the Indo-Pacific region, mainly due to fishing for the shark fins, and the populations are being decimated.”

Researchers with the World Wildlife Fund say this sea off Queensland is one of the last marine wilderness areas on the planet….they want to protect the sharks here by declaring it a marine protected area.

In the meantime — we want you to locate this sea on a map and name it.

Fishes of another sort figure in our Geo Quiz today. We wanted to know the name of the sea off Australia’s north east coast.

It’s where conservationists are studying sharks that swim in and around the Great Barrier Reef.

An international team of scientists reported today that 11 out of 21 species, more than half, of oceanic sharks are threatened with extinction.

They blame over fishing…and the increasing demand for “shark fin soup”. Australia’s sharks are no exception. They’re at risk says Richard Leck with World Wildlife Fund Australia.

?Currently the Coral Sea is virtually unprotected. It has no main protected areas anywhere in the region and so the first step is to embark on putting a marine protected area over the entire Coral Sea.?

So the Coral Sea shark habitat off the coast of Queensland Australia is the answer to our Geo Quiz.