Galápagos Platform is located approximately 950 km from the Central/South American mainland within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Ecuador. The area includes all the major islands of the Galápagos Archipelago, except for the remote, far northern islands of Darwin and Wolf. The area is situated within the Galápagos Marine Reserve, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, and within two Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs), the Galapagos Archipelago and Western Extension and the Carnegie Ridge Equatorial Front. The Galápagos Marine Reserve, created in 1998, covers 138,000 km² of ocean extending 75 km from a baseline around the farthest points of the main islands. The islands included within the area were formed, and continue to grow, due to volcanic activity influenced by the Galápagos hotspot. Generation of magma occurs in the subsurface here due to an anomalously warm region of the mantle at the top of an ascending mantle plume. This molten rock is generated beneath the Galápagos Platform (Kurz & Geist 1999), occasionally rising to the surface to erupt at the volcanoes of the Galápagos Islands. The centre of volcanic activity above the Galápagos hotspot is currently beneath the western end of the Galápagos Platform and the western-most of the Galápagos Islands.

The islands sit at the confluence of major ocean currents; the cool Peru-Humboldt current from the southeast merges with the warm Panama Bight from the northeast, to feed the eastward-flowing South Equatorial Current. The relative strength of the two currents brings seasonal patterns to Galápagos: a cool dry season from July through December, and a warm, wet season for the other half of the year. The South Equatorial Current is also fed from below by the westward-flowing Equatorial Undercurrent, which rises to around 80 m just west of the islands. Wind forcing produces upwelling on the western margins of the islands (Forryan et al. 2021), which forms the basis of a highly productive food chain, and one of the world’s most important tuna fishing grounds (Bucaram et al. 2018).

Interannual variability around the Galápagos Islands is mainly driven by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (Fiedler & Lavin 2017). During El Niño conditions, the atmospheric pressure gradient from east to west across the Pacific is weakened, which in turn reduces upwelling and leads to pooling of warm surface waters in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. El Niño irregularly occurs every two to seven years, by way of wind anomalies over the western and central Pacific flattening the equatorial thermocline across the basin (Fiedler 2002), and typically lasts 6–12 months (Bertrand et al. 2020). These conditions can also alternate with cool La Niña phases of Pacific upper-ocean water masses, which occur when the atmospheric pressure gradient is strengthened.

The maximum depth of the Galápagos Platform is around 500 m. At the platform break, the slope descends to >3,000 m. The area hosts an array of important habitats for different life stages of sharks and rays, including mangrove fringed lagoons, sandy beaches, coastal rocky reefs, offshore shallow seamounts, and open waters.

This Important Shark and Ray Area is delineated from inshore and surface waters (0 m) to a depth of 1,928 m based on the maximum known depth of the Qualifying Species.