First characterization of shark nursery habitat in the United States Virgin Islands: evidence of habitat partitioning by two shark species
By Bryan M. DeAngelis, C. McCandless, N. Kohler, Conrad W. Recksiek, G. Skomal. 2008
84 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Little is known of the diversity, demography, and essential fish habitat of sharks within the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) marine ecosystem. To examine species diversity and the relative abundance of elasmobranchs in this region, bottom-longline and hand-gear sampling was conducted in Fish Bay, St. John, USVI, from June 2004 to December 2005. In the 8 sampling trips during this period, 54 standardized longline sets caught 174 elasmobranchs comprising 5 species of sharks and 1 batoid. Overall catch per unit effort [ln(CPUE + 1) ± SE] was 1.83 ± 0.16 elasmobranchs 100 hooks–1 h–1. Lemon sharks Negaprion brevirostris had the highest relative abundance based on log-transformed CPUE data (0.98 ± 0.15), followed by blacktip sharks Carcharhinus limbatus (0.91 ± 0.18), southern stingrays Dasyatis americana (0.28 ± 0.08), nurse sharks Ginglymostoma cirratum (0.08 ± 0.05), blacknose sharks Carcharhinus acronotus (0.06 ± 0.04) and the Caribbean sharpnose Rhizoprionodon porosus (0.03 ± 0.03). The relative abundance of all species was significantly higher in the summer (2.6 ± 0.2) than during the winter (1.1 ± 0.2). For the blacktip (N = 89 captures of 74 individuals) and lemon (N = 66, 48 individuals) sharks, which comprised the bulk of the catch, mean fork length (± SE) was 51.9 ± 0.63 cm and 59.9 ± 1.2 cm, respectively, representing primarily neonatal and young-of-the-year life stages. The recapture rates for blacktip and lemon sharks were 21% and 29%, respectively, and nearly all recaptures occurred within the bay, indicating a high degree of site fidelity. Capture information and limited acoustic tracking provided evidence of spatial and temporal habitat partitioning by these 2 shark species within the bay. Although the CPUE of both species was highest over shallow (<1 m) seagrass substrate, lemon sharks were found and tracked exclusively on shallow, mangrove-fringed seagrass habitat, while blacktip sharks utilized a wider area of the bay. Fish Bay was determined to provide important nursery habitat for young juvenile lemon and blacktip sharks in the USVI.
Subfields: Aquatic Science, Nature and Landscape Conservation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/135799851f65cde80aca4e4206ffac84a8bd7b2f
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In Aquatic Science
In Nature and Landscape Conservation
Citations in the corpus
- Ontogenetic shifts in movement and habitat use of juvenile pigeye sharks Carcharhinus amboinensis in a tropical nearshore region (2011, background): “Further studies have examined how different shark species share space within these environments and have found that habitats are partitioned on both spatial and temporal scales (White & Potter 2004, Pikitch et al. 2005, DeAngelis et al. 2008).”
- Quantifying movement patterns for shark conservation at remote coral atolls in the Indian Ocean (2011, background): “Site fidelity is a common feature of many other shark species that inhabit coral reefs; the behaviour has been observed in juvenile blacktip and lemon sharks in the Virgin Islands (DeAngelis et al. 2008), juvenile and adult lemon sharks at Bimini Islands (Gruber et al.”
- Spatial and temporal movement patterns of a multi-species coastal reef shark aggregation (2011, unknown): “The presence of multiple species and size classes of reef sharks on healthy reefs (Nelson & Johnson 1980, Stevens 1984, McKibben & Nelson 1986, Chapman et al. 2005, DeAngelis et al 2008) suggests that coexistence arises in part because habitat partitioning occurs at some spatial and temporal scales.”
- Complexities of coastal shark movements and their implications for management (2010, background): “Dicken et al. (2006) hypothesised that prey density is related to habitat choice for grey nurse sharks, whereby adults appear to follow the movement of the sardine run along the east coast of South Africa.”
- Sharks in nearshore environments: models, importance, and consequences (2010, background): “Nearshore regions are also used in different ways by different shark species, and the characteristics and habitat type of a region may influence species distribution and movement (White & Potter 2004, DeAngelis et al. 2008).”