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A male mandarin dogfish shark that was caught along with a pregnant female in the waters off western Australia, far from their usual stomping grounds near Indonesia.
By Tia Ghose
LiveScience
A rare shark couple found for the first time off the coast of Australia may force a rethink of the species' range.
Two years ago, a sport fisherman caught a pair of rare sharks off Rottnest Island in Western Australia. The duo, a male shark about 3.3 feet (1 meter) long and a pregnant female about 3.9 feet (1.2 m) long, looked different from the sharks that normally prowl the Australian waters. The female was carrying 22 pups.
The fishermen gave the sharks to ocean researchers at the University of Western Australia. After analyzing the sharks' DNA, the team concluded that the sharks were mandarin dogfish sharks, which are normally seen only in the waters off Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand.
"After two years of thorough investigation which included DNA sequencing, the sharks were identified as mandarin dogfish (Cirrhigaleus barbifer), a species never before seen in Australia," said study co-author Ryan Kempster, a marine neuroecologist at the conservation group Support Our Sharks.
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An X-ray image of a mandarin dogfish shark found in Australian waters, far from what was thought to be its only habitat around Indonesia.
The new discovery reveals that the shark has a much larger range than previously thought. The scientists don't know exactly why the sharks strayed so far from their normal habitat.
The discovery of 22 pups was also a surprise. Scientists have only discovered two other pregnant sharks of this species, and those specimens weren't carrying so many sharks.
"Previously, it was thought that the maximum number of pups for this species was 10," Kempster said in a statement.
The analysis of the sharks was published Thursday in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records.
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose or OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
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Leave a Comment:
If that's the male, I wonder what the pregnant female looks like!
About the same, but wild eyes and holding a kitchen knife.
No mention as to why these sharks were killed for useless research. This pisses me off that the fisherman didn't just let these sharks go, especially since one was pregnant. This is senseless killing of an animal.
They weren't killed for useless research. They were killed by a sports fisherman and then donated to science to conduct useful research on. I agree with you that it would be better if they had never been killed but the best was made of a bad situation.
wow, these sharks have two dorsal type fins. must be popular to catch
I don't understand how this automatically expands their range. Manatees (sp) have been found in the Chesapeake Bay, and that's not their normal "range".
That's why we get to use the word "may." We know so little about species ranges in the open ocean that it's quite likely to think it would be a range expansion. But we would have to look at he actual paper to see what other evidence or logic they may have presented.
It can be hard to tell these things from news articles. This news article contradicts itself by talking about a larger range at the same time they talk about "straying." I don't know if that problem is with the jourmalist or the scientist.
I'm waiting for the global warming theorists to start their rants here