Discovery of a Multispecies Shark Aggregation and Parturition Area in the Ba Estuary, Fiji Islands
Received: 4 October 2017 | Revised: 15 April 2018 | Accepted: 22 April 2018 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4230 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Discovery of a multispecies shark aggregation and parturition area in the Ba Estuary, Fiji Islands Tom Vierus1,2 | Stefan Gehrig2,3 | Juerg M. Brunnschweiler4 | Kerstin Glaus1 | Martin Zimmer2,5 | Amandine D. Marie1 | Ciro Rico1,6 1School of Marine Studies, Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment, The Abstract University of the South Pacific, Laucala, Population declines in shark species have been reported on local and global scales, Suva, Fiji with overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change posing severe threats. The 2Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Bremen, Germany lack of species- specific baseline data on ecology and distribution of many sharks, 3Department of Biosciences, University of however, makes conservation measures challenging. Here, we present a fisheries- Exeter, Penryn Campus, UK independent shark survey from the Fiji Islands, where scientific knowledge on locally 4Independent Researcher, Zurich, Switzerland occurring elasmobranchs is largely still lacking despite the location’s role as a shark 5Faculty of Biology/Chemistry, University of hotspot in the Pacific. Juvenile shark abundance in the fishing grounds of the Ba Bremen, Bremen, Germany Estuary (north- western Viti Levu) was assessed with a gillnet- and longline- based 6 Department of Wetland Ecology, Estación survey from December 2015 to April 2016. A total of 103 juvenile sharks identified Biológica de Doñana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (EBD, CSIC), as blacktip Carcharhinus limbatus (n = 57), scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini Sevilla, Spain (n = 35), and great hammerhead Sphyrna mokarran (n = 11) sharks were captured, Correspondence tagged, and released.
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