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David Doubillet and Jennifer Hayes

An adult female zebra shark glides through the Wild Reef exhibit at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Adult zebra sharks are endangered everywhere outside Australia, but there are more than 100 in aquariums around the world. So several, including Shedd, are letting adults mate and produce eggs, which will be shipped to Indonesia.

Black tip reef sharks patrol shallow sea grass beds near Kri Island. These sharks, now common, had been a rare site before Raja Ampat’s network of nine marine protected areas covering 8,000 square miles allowed sea life to begin recovering. So many zebra sharks were killed that the few that remained were unable to find mates. They've never come back, which is why scientists are trying to jumpstart the population through reintroduction of captive-raised animals.

The Wayag Islands in northern Raja Ampat are a labyrinth of sandy beaches and turquoise lagoons and atolls broken by limestone towers. Fishing boats once packed these remote waters, nearly wiping out zebra sharks, but now a marine protected area—one of nine covering 8,000 square miles—patrolled by rangers provides a refuge for sharks, rays, turtles and other marine life.

Cardinal fish and glassy sweepers pulse and swirl around a sea fan draped in crinoids beneath a coral ledge in the Wayag Islands. Raja Ampat is home to some 1,600 species of fish and more than three-quarters of the world’s coral species, and Wayag is among its most spectacular regions.

The day before the very first two juvenile sharks, Charlie and Kathlyn, are released into the wild, handlers at a sea pen on Kri Island stretch one of them to measure it and check its health for the very last time.

Shark caretaker Kyra Wicaksono uses a light to illuminate a zebra shark embryo inside its egg case at a new shark nursery at the Misool Resort in southern Raja Ampat, Indonesia. The egg, also called a mermaid’s purse, was shipped from Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. Soon, a shark will emerge and will live in a tank before eventually being moved to an outdoor sea pen and then the ocean.

Nesha Ichida gently ferries a juvenile zebra shark through the sea pen on Kri Island to a team of shark caretakers for the shark’s final health check the day before it’s released to the wild.

Scientist Nesha Ichida releases the second zebra shark of the day, a young female named Kathlyn, in Indonesia’s Wayag Islands. Ichida is part of a new group, ReShark, led by 44 aquariums from around the world, that aims to rebuild endangered shark populations by reintroducing sharks raised in captivity to their native waters. (Ichida had released Charlie, Kathlyn’s older sibling, and the very first shark set free through this program, 20 minutes earlier.)