Inside an insulated FedEx package, sloshing around in a sealed sack of seawater at 30,000 feet, four shark eggs traveled from the U.S. to Indonesia last month. Each leathery capsule—affectionately nicknamed “mermaid’s purses”—held the embryo of a species so decimated by overfishing that conservationists have built a first-of-its-kind international rewilding pipeline to overcome functional extinction in Southeast Asian waters.

From Chicago to Seattle, Taiwan, Jakarta, Sorong and Raja Ampat, with the help of 10 partner organizations, four planes and one boat, the eggs arrived in a marine sanctuary in the heart of the Coral Triangle in July.

Battling temperature variation, water oxygenation levels and transnational customs, the team pulled off a feat that was not just an award-worthy accomplishment in global logistics. It might also be the future of marine conservation.

“These sharks are playing the role right now as ambassadors for future endangered sharks and rays,” said Nesha Ichida, program director of Thrive Conservation and the program manager of ReShark’s Indonesian StAR Project.

For Ichida, who credits her early interest in marine science with witnessing coral reef bleaching firsthand and watching National Geographic documentaries while growing up in Jakarta, the success of the project rests in partnerships with regional, national and international actors. “To have a coalition of the willing be able to collaborate this way gives me a little bit of hope in humanity,” she said.

Zebra sharks—also known locally as Indo-Pacific leopard sharks—were once heavily prevalent in tropical waters from Taiwan to Tonga. Named for their black and white stripes in youth and leopard-like spots in adulthood, the bottom-dwelling species has been devastated in recent decades.

“Fishing activities really hammered them,” said Steve Kessel, director of marine research at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, whose Midwest office walls are adorned with marine taxonomy posters. “They became a target and got hammered to the point where the youngest generations in Indonesia now don’t have a name for them. They don’t know what they are.”

Read the full article about aquariums airlifting sharks to the Pacific by Johnny Sturgeon at Inside Climate News.