Can we save the hammerhead shark from extinction?

Off the coast of Mexico, National Geographic Explorer Bertie Gregory spots a lifeless creature dangling from a fishing line. With a bulging head that looks like it swallowed a gavel, there's no mistaking the animal: It’s a hammerhead shark.

Gregory captured the heartbreaking footage while filming Hammerheads Up Close, premiering July 5 on Disney+ and Hulu and airing on National Geographic at 9/8c. In the show, the wildlife filmmaker scours the Pacific waters looking for hammerheads and examines why their numbers have plummeted in recent years.

Across the globe, there are more than nine hammerhead species, many of which are critically endangered. Hammerheads are “a group of sharks that we've been pretty concerned about from a conservation standpoint,” says Yannis Papastamatiou, a National Geographic Explorer and professor at Florida International University. These iconic, migratory animals are targeted by fishers, accidentally caught as bycatch, and impacted by pollution and habitat destruction.

(Overfishing threatens the world’s oceans—but there may be hope.)

But in some good news for these peculiar fish, an UN-backed treaty recently upped protections for 40 migratory animals, including critically endangered scalloped sharks (Sphyrna lewini) and great hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna mokarran).

To find out how these vulnerable animals are being protected, we spoke with some of the experts working to find conservation solutions.

The greatest threat to hammerhead sharks

Like several other shark species, hammerheads are targeted for their large dorsal fins, which are often sold to countries in Asia. The shark fin market is thought to be worth up to $550 million per year.

“That massive fin makes them a massive target,” says Gregory in the show. “It’s like swimming around with an enormous dollar sign on your back.”

But focusing only on the conservation issues caused by finning can distract from the biggest global threat to sharks: overfishing. Sharks are both killed for their meat and accidentally caught (as bycatch). “They may not be the target, but nonetheless they die because they get caught,” explains Papastamatiou.

The catching and releasing of these sharks by recreational sports fishers can also be detrimental. “Hammerheads tend to die very quickly with stress,” says Papastamatiou. The longer a hammer stays out of the water, for something like a photo op, for example, the higher the chances it won’t make it. “Just because you see it swim off, doesn't mean that it's actually survived.”

Hammerheads are slow-growing sharks, so it takes a long time for them to reach sexual maturity, and they only give birth to a few pups each year. “It takes a long time to replace individuals after they are fished,” says Francesco Garzon, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter in the U.K.

Overfishing has a devastating impact on shark populations globally. “Between 73 and 100 million sharks are killed each year,” says Garzon. Since the 1970s, “we may have lost up to 75 percent of oceanic sharks, including hammerheads.”

Solution 1: Protecting shark habitats

Creating marine protected areas (MPAs) at key habitats such as nurseries, feeding and mating areas, and migration routes can be an effective way to protect shark populations, says Garzon.

(Marine protected areas are important. But are they working?)

For example, since the fishing village of Cabo Pulmo in Mexico created a “no fishing zone” in 1995 and replaced the community’s income with tourism, their marine life has rebounded. After around 14 years, the biomass of marine animals in these waters increased by 463 percent.

In May 2026, Papua New Guinea announced a new 200,000 km² MPA which forbids destructive activities such as fishing. Its boundaries were informed by a 2024 National Geographic Pristine Seas expedition tracking endangered gray reef sharks. Other vulnerable species, including hammerheads, will also benefit.

Solution 2: Tracking shark migrations

But experts must choose locations carefully. While not all hammerheads migrate, some travel hundreds of miles to find food, suitable water temperatures, or a place to reproduce. These long journeys can put them at risk as soon as they leave MPAs. To protect the right places, it’s vital that experts know where the sharks venture off to.

In 2023, researchers attached a tracking tag to a scalloped hammerhead off Darwin Island in the Galapagos. Her huge belly led them to believe she was pregnant. Following her movements for 204 days revealed that she swam between a birthing area off the coast of Panama, the Galapagos Islands, and an offshore region more than 1,100 miles away.

They believe she gave birth after six days in Panama and think this is the first documentation of a birthing migration for this species.

“Pregnant females embark on epic migrations across the tropical eastern Pacific,” says Pelayo Salinas, a marine ecologist at the Charles Darwin Foundation’s Shark Ecology and Conservation Program who was involved in this research. He says the findings revealed “how little we know about the most basic life history of most shark species, including one critically endangered with extinction.”

Researchers can follow sharks without setting eyes on them using environmental DNA: shreds of genetic material sloughed off by animals. These invisible clues have revealed the whereabouts of scalloped bonnethead, scoophead, and Pacific bonnethead sharks—small hammerhead species so rarely seen that it had been almost impossible to study them before.

Solution 3: Working together for global protections

In addition to recent research and positive results from MPAs, scalloped and great hammerheads were all recently added to Appendix I of the Convention on Migratory Species, an international conservation agreement. Appendix I is considered the highest level of protection for these animals.

Garzon sees this as “fantastic news for conservation,” because “no single country can protect them alone, and gaps in coverage anywhere along their range can be exploited.”

But including these sharks on the listing is just the first step, says Salinas: “It is not a silver bullet” and countries need to follow through on their promises.

How you can help protect sharks for future generations

Apex predators like great hammerheads shape ecosystems, says Papastamatiou. “It may be sometimes in unpredictable ways, but there are likely to be strong effects on the ecosystems if those animals were removed.”

Despite their crucial role in keeping the ocean healthy, sharks have an unfair reputation. “For many decades, especially since the movie Jaws was aired [in 1975], the general public has been so afraid of sharks that nobody has really cared,” says Salinas. This has resulted in fewer resources to study and protect sharks, although this is slowly changing.

With no time to waste, everyone can help—for example, when picking up groceries. “If we have the privilege of choosing, we should opt for locally caught, certified bycatch-free fish from traditional fisheries over industrially caught fish,” says Garzon, or switch to a more plant-based diet.

(You could purchase endangered shark meat—and never know it.)

“We humans have pushed hammerheads to the brink of extinction,” says Gregory in the show, but we can still make amends. Marine protections do indeed work, and we can protect these vulnerable sharks by expanding protected areas. “Their future depends on what happens next.”