Sharks are overexploited illegally for variety of purposes, including shark meat for human consumption, fins for oil and cartilage is used for medical treatments. In India, due to the over exploitation, shark resources are greatly affected in the recent years and regrettably information about the stock assessment, status, threatened or endangered species are scanty. However, it is time to evolve the shark fishing policy in our country for regularizing the shark fishing activities. To address these issues, threats and status of shark landings will be studied in the major fish landing centres of south east coast of India. As this research requires extensive data collection from different major landing centres, the outputs will be utilized to compare with the IUCN red listed shark species. In addition, awareness programs will be conducted among the fishermen community in collaboration with local NGOs, which helps to minimize the over exploitation of sharks and reduce the illegal fishing activities. The catch data will be utilized for making certain conservation measures, which will help the regional authorities of government bodies for creating and establishing specific conservation action plans.

-In this study, Baseline data on the availability of shark species will be obtained population trend of available shark species will be generated based on the collected data

-The obtained species list will be compared with IUCN red list-Awareness programmes and supply of shark species identification posters will helps to avoid the exploitation of endangered species

-Collected data will helpful to enforce the indiscriminate immature fishing of sharks. It is also helpful to formulate regulation on harvest of selected species under a sustainable balance

-This baseline data will be helpful to create the long time measures

-Salient finding of the proposed study along with suggestions will be recommended to the government authorities for establishing species specific conservation plans for sustainable management