As coastal species experience increasing anthropogenic pressures there is a growing need to characterise the ecological drivers of their abundance and habitat use, and understand how they may respond to changes in their environment. Accordingly, fishery-independent surveys were undertaken to investigate shark abundance along approximately 400 km of the tropical east coast of Australia. Generali...

The rectal glands of elasmobranchs perform the function of salt-excreting organs. These glands are smaller and show regressive changes in specimens of the bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas found in fresh-water environment, compared with specimens of this and other species from a marine habitat.

Dinemoura discrepans Cressey, 1967 (Copepoda, Siphonostomatoida, Pandaridae) is redescribed based on the specimens taken from four species of sharks caught off the southeast coast of Taiwan. The four species of sharks are: pelagic thresher, Alopias pelagicus Nakamura; bigeye thresher, A. superciliosus Lowe; blacktip shark, Carcharhinus limbatus (Müller et Henle); and oceanic whitetip shark, C. ...

severe discharge of sewage and industrial effluents into the persian gulf leads to the deposition of various types of heavy metals, especially lead and mercury, in the muscles of fish. total mercury and methylmercury contents were determined in the edible parts (muscle tissue, fillet) of two different most popular frozen fish species from the persian gulf to ascertain whether the concentrations...

The increasing demand for shark fins in Asia, and the publicity resulting from finning and discarding live sharks, has generated concern regarding the sustainability of the world’s shark populations. These concerns can be attributed to the shark’s life history, which is characterized by a pattern of slow growth, late maturity, few offspring, and long life, making populations vulnerable to overe...

BACKGROUND Quantifying genetic diversity and metapopulation structure provides insights into the evolutionary history of a species and helps develop appropriate management strategies. We provide the first assessment of genetic structure in spinner sharks (Carcharhinus brevipinna), a large cosmopolitan carcharhinid, sampled from eastern and northern Australia and South Africa. METHODS AND FIND...

The northwestern Indian Ocean harbors a number of larger marine vertebrate taxa that warrant the investigation of genetic population structure given remarkable spatial heterogeneity in biological characteristics such as distribution, behavior, and morphology. Here, we investigate the genetic population structure of four commercially exploited shark species with different biological characterist...

Longline fishing is the most common elasmobranch capture method around the world, yet the physiological consequences of this technique are poorly understood. To quantify the sub-lethal effects of longline capture in the commonly exploited Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi), 37 individuals were captured using standard, mid-water longlines. Hook timers provided hooking duration to the nea...