Mo Ganji: Pondicherry Shark | Pondicherry-Hai | Carcharhinus hemiodon | No. 162/250 from work group 8/99

Pondicherry Shark | Pondicherry-Hai | Carcharhinus hemiodon

Mo Ganji traces the Pondicherry shark — a medium-sized coastal shark once inhabiting shallow tropical waters — through a line that seeks the core of presence rather than outline or motion. The continuous line reduces the being to a concentrated coherence, enough to register existence while remaining open to meanings beyond the category of “shark.” In this narrowing of form, what appears is not threat or speed, but continuity held at its limit.

Carcharhinus hemiodon is listed as Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct) on the IUCN Red List. Historically recorded from parts of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, the species has not been confirmed in the wild for several decades. Only a handful of specimens and historical records attest to its former existence, and its current status remains uncertain.

The principal drivers of decline are believed to include intensive coastal fishing, habitat degradation, and bycatch in nearshore fisheries. Because the species occupied shallow waters close to human activity, pressure would have been constant and unrelenting. The absence of recent records suggests that decline occurred quietly, without formal recognition at the time.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the shark can be encountered without certainty or spectacle. It allows attention to rest on a life that may already have slipped into absence, revealing how extinction often takes place not as a dramatic moment, but as a gradual fading that becomes visible only when nothing remains to be seen.