First known omnivorous shark species identified

60% of the bonnethead shark’s diet is made up of seagrass, which they happily graze upon as well as eating fish, crabs, snails and shrimp

Ian SampleScience editor

Wed 5 Sep 2018 00.01 BSTLast modified on Wed 5 Sep 2018 02.50 BST

It is one of the most radical rebrandings in history: contrary to their bloodthirsty image, some sharks are not irrepressible meat eaters, but are happy to munch on vegetation too.

According to US researchers, one of the most common sharks in the world, a relative of the hammerhead which patrols the shores of the Americas, is the first variety of shark to be outed as a bona fide omnivore.

The bonnethead shark is abundant in the shallow waters of the eastern Pacific, the Western Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, where they feed on crab, shrimp, snails and bony fish. Though small by shark standards, adult females – the larger of the sexes – can still reach an impressive five feet long.

Scientists at the University of California in Irvine, and Florida International University in Miami, decided to investigate the sharks’ dietary habits after reading reports of the fish chomping on seagrass, the flowering marine plant that forms subsea meadows in some coastal waters.

“It has been assumed by most that this consumption was incidental and that it provided no nutritional value,” said Samantha Leigh, a researcher on the team. “I wanted to see how much of this seagrass diet the sharks could digest, because what an animal consumes is not necessarily the same as what it digests and retains nutrients from.”

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Alligator caught on video eating shark off South Carolina coast - via Herp Digest

July 14, 2018

To see video go to 

https://fox2now.com/2018/07/14/alligator-caught-on-video-eating-shark-off-south-carolina-coast/

HILTON HEAD, S.C. – An alligator has been caught on video eating a small shark off the coast of South Carolina.

The Island Packet reported that Kristen Poillon captured the video, which shows a 7-foot alligator chomping on the bonnethead shark at Skull Creek.

The alligator was out of its normal habitat and swimming in the saltwater of Skull Creek, a part of the Intracoastal Waterway, according to the paper. Locals have reportedly given the alligator the name “Charlie.”

“He doesn’t seem aggressive,” Poillon told the Hilton Head Island Packet. “He mostly shows up when the fishing charter boats start back to their season because the eating is good for him off the dock when they clean the fish.”

Scientists believe encounters between sharks and alligators are becoming more frequent.

Brian Silliman, a Duke University ecologist, wrote about it in a study on alligators appearing in saltwater.

“It’s the old norm, the way it used to be before we pushed these species onto their last legs in hard-to-reach refuges. Now, they are returning,” he wrote.

Whale and shark species at increasing risk from microplastic pollution – study

Large filter feeders, such as baleen whales and basking sharks, could be particularly at risk from ingesting the tiny plastic particles, say scientists

Fiona HarveyEnvironment correspondent

Mon 5 Feb 2018 06.01 GMTLast modified on Thu 8 Feb 2018 13.32 GMT

Whales, some sharks and other marine species such as rays are increasingly at risk from microplastics in the oceans, a new study suggests.

Species such as baleen whales and basking sharks, which feed through filtering seawater for plankton, are ingesting the tiny particles of indigestible plastic which now appear to permeate oceans throughout the world. Some of these species have evolved to swallow hundreds or even thousands of cubic metres of seawater a day, but taking in microplastic can block their ability to absorb nutrients, and may have toxic side-effects.

The new study, published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, advises more research on the megafauna of the oceans, as the effects of microplastics on them is currently not well understood. Scientists have found, for instance through examining the bodies of beached whales, large pieces of plastic in the guts of such creatures, but the effect of microplastics, though less obvious, may be just as harmful.

Elitza Germanov, a researcher at the Marine Megafauna Foundation and co-author the study, said: “Despite the growing research on microplastics in the marine environment, there are only a few studies that examine the effects on large filter feeders. We are still trying to understand the magnitude of the issue. It has become clear, though, that microplastic contamination has the potential to further reduce the population numbers of these species, many of which are long-lived and have few offspring throughout their lives.”

Many species of whale, filter-feeding shark and rays are already under threat from other problems, such as overfishing and pollution. The added stress from microplastics could push some species further towards extinction, the authors of the study warned.

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Real-life Sharknado? Cyclone Debbie washes up shark on Australian street

A journalist filming floods in the aftermath of the storm found a dead bull shark in the town of Ayr, prompting residents to draw connections to Sharknado

Associated Press in Ayr

Thursday 30 March 2017 16.51 BST Last modified on Friday 31 March 2017 00.05 BST 

An Australian journalist covering flooding from Cyclone Debbie was shocked to come across a dead bull shark that was apparently swept up in the deluge.

The WIN News reporter Philip Calder told News Corp that he was in the town of Ayr to shoot video of a flooded road and couldn’t believe it when he came across a shark in a puddle. He said the shark was “the talk of the town” and many local people had turned out to touch it.

Some social media users are drawing a connection between the shark and Syfy’s Sharknado film series, which features sharks getting swept up in cyclones and wreaking havoc on cities.

Cyclone Debbie knocked out power to thousands when it slammed ashore with winds up to 260km/h (160mph) on Tuesday.

Source 

Studying poop shows ancient shark ate its own young

by Chuck Bednar

An ancient group of sharks living approximately 300 million years ago were cannibalistic and would even devour their own young, according to fossil evidence collected as part of research detailed in Thursday’s edition of Palaeontology.

Lead author Aodhán Ó Gogáin, a Ph. D. student in the Trinity College Dublin School of Natural Sciences, and his colleagues studied coprolites (or fossilized feces) of adult Orthacanthus sharks and found that they contained tiny teeth belonging to young members of their own species.

Orthacanthus sharks, the study authors explained, lived in coastal swamps along the equator and used protected lagoons to raise their offspring – but when food started to become scarce, they did not hesitate to cannibalize their own young in order to obtain much-needed sustenance.

“Orthacanthus was a three-metre-long xenacanth shark with a dorsal spine, an eel-like body, and tricusped teeth,” Ó Gogáin explained in a statement. “There is already evidence from fossilized stomach contents that ancient sharks like Orthacanthus preyed on amphibians and other fish, but this is the first evidence that these sharks also ate the young of their own species.”

Why bother eating your own young?

Ó Gogáin’s team found evidence of shark cannibalism in unusual spiral-shaped coprolites found in the Minto Coalfield of New Brunswick. Because of the shape of the fossilized dung, they were able to link it to Orthacanthus, as the shark possessed a unique corkscrew-shaped rectum.

In-depth analysis of the coprolites found they contained many fossilized teeth belonging to juvenile Orthacanthus, confirming that the creatures engaged in fillial cannibalism (which is just a fancy way of saying they would eat their own young). This discovery is not unprecedented, since as BBC News noted, modern-day bull sharks are also know to consume their own offspring.

Read more at 

20-Foot Monster Shark Once Trolled Mesozoic Seas

by Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | June 03, 2015 02:00pm ET

A giant shark the size of a two-story building prowled the shallow seas 100 million years ago, new fossils reveal.

The massive fish, Leptostyrax macrorhiza, would have been one of the largest predators of its day, and may push back scientists' estimates of when such gigantic predatory sharks evolved, said study co-author Joseph Frederickson, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Oklahoma.

The ancient sea monster was discovered by accident. Frederickson, who was then an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had started an amateur paleontology club to study novel fossil deposits. In 2009, the club took a trip to the Duck Creek Formation, just outside Fort Worth, Texas, which contains myriad marine invertebrate fossils, such as the extinct squidlike creatures known as ammonites. About 100 million years ago the area was part of a shallow sea known as the Western Interior Seaway that split North America in two and spanned from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, Frederickson said.

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Crocodile And Shark Fight To Death In Australia

10:19am UK, Wednesday 06 August 2014

Tourists looked on in shock as a three-legged, 18ft saltwater crocodile fought a bull shark in a titanic face-off.

One of Australia's most famous crocodiles, Brutus, was spotted wrestling with the creature between its jaws on the banks of the Adelaide River in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory.

The shark appeared to be no match for the 80-year-old reptile who, despite missing a front leg and most of his teeth, had the the sea creature firmly in his grasp.

Andrew Paice was on an hour-long wildlife cruise with his family and said his seven-year-old daughter was left "awestruck".

"So were the rest of the people (on board) including the guide - he had never seen it before either and he had been there for about 30 years. He was so excited," he said.

"It was on the way back to the jetty, we went past Brutus again, he was up on the bank.

"As we were going past, we noticed that there was a fin. We thought it was a barramundi (fish) or something.

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Fury over great white shark haul

April 12 2014 at 02:49pm 

By MURRAY WILLIAMS

Cape Town - A shark catch that has possibly set a new world angling record has left a shark tourism operator furious, promising to enlist the government’s help to stop the illegal fishing of sharks.

Two UK-based media houses, Birmingham Mail and the Express, have published accounts of how a Birmingham angler caught a 6m, two-ton great white shark off Cape Agulhas on March 25.

In the Express, Andy Hales, 55, recounted “wrestling with it for two hours”.

“You could see these razor-sharp teeth that were about the size of my head,” Hales told the Express.

“I knew one slip and I could have got pulled in – I was hanging on for dear life.”

The Express reported that the shark had “towed” their vessel for more than two nautical miles, which tired it out. It was “finally brought under control, but it was too big for the single-engine-propelled vessel to take on board”.

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'Great White' shark washes up on Kerry beach

But don't worry folks it's not Lydia

A 1.8m shark from the Great White family has washed up on an Irish beach.

The female porbeagle shark was discovered by photographer Bernard Fitzgerald as he was walking on Aughacasla beach in Castlegregory, Co Kerry, at the weekend.

The arrival of the adult shark in Tralee Bay comes as a tagged Great White called Lydia is set to be the first recorded member of her species to cross the Atlantic as she swims within 1200km of our shores.

Marine biologist Kevin Flannery admitted the porbeagle shark does bear a close resemblance to the beasts made famous by the Jaws movie.

He said: “The porbeagle does look very like a Great White. People could think the Great White we have been talking about has landed in Kerry.

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Jackass style shark stunt nearly turns deadly for adrenalin junky

SHARK ATTACK NEAR MISS0:19

Play video

Gold Coast adrenalin junkie Shaun Harrington almost turned into lunch while filming a video stunt for clothing label The Mad Hueys. Courtesy: The Mad Hueys

Man yells in terror after 2.4m Tiger shark lunges at him

Jack-ass style stunt was to get 'up close and personal' with man-eater

Flimsy cage used for protection

IT was a Jackass-style stunt that nearly turned around and bit Gold Coast adrenalin junkie Shaun Harrington - or rather mauled him.

Harrington, 27, and fellow forever-clowning twin brother Dean decided to go 'cage diving' with sharks off the Coast last weekend for an extreme video shoot for their surfing and fishing clothing label, fittingly called The Mad Hueys.

But the cage wasn't the jaws-proof reinforced steel type typically used by shark divers - it was a flimsy $50 bird cage Shaun planned to plonk on his head.

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Shark Species Thought to Be Extinct Found in Fish Market - via Chad Arment

By David Shiffman

January 13, 2014

After his 1902 trip to Yemen, scholar and naturalist Wilhelm Hein returned with a variety of plants and animals, which he donated to the Vienna Museum. One of these specimens, a shark, sat unnoticed for more than 80 years. In 1985 it was identified as the first (and only known) specimen of Carcharhinus leiodon, the smoothtooth blacktip shark. Because no others had ever been found by scientists, Alec Moore, regional vice chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Shark Specialist Group’s Indian Ocean group, says that “some suspected it might be extinct or not a valid species.”

In 2008, during a Shark Conservation Society research expedition to Kuwait’s sharq fish market (the name is a coincidence, it means east in Arabic), Moore says that “amongst the many species of whaler shark was one which looked very similar, but different, to a couple of other species.” Later analysis revealed that although this specimen was more than 3,000 kilometers from where Hein caught his, this was a smoothtooth blacktip, the first new individual seen by scientists in over a century.

Read on

Photobombing 'Shark' Actually A Dolphin, Expert Says

When is a shark not a shark? When it's (likely) a dolphin.

Last Friday, June Emerson of California took a picture of her 12-year-old boy and a friend at Manhattan Beach. It was a typical fun-in-the-sun shot, except for a scary looking, shadowy figure in the surf, just behind the boys. It immediately went viral as a "shark photobomb."

Jeff Kurr, an expert who has had some pretty close encounters filming sharks for Discovery's Shark Week, told CNN that the mysterious marine stalker was "a juvenile great white shark."

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Can there be such thing as a shark photobomb?

That’s what many are calling an eerie and eye-catching photo inadvertently snapped by a California mother that appears to show a large shark, or maybe a dolphin, swimming near her two children.

"It was quite a shock to see” the photo, June Emerson told KTLA about her photo, which captured the outline of a large fish swimming underneath a breaking wave close to the shore on Manhattan Beach.

“Many local surfers and lifeguards have seen this and believe it to be a shark,” Emerson said. “Of course, I told my kids it was dolphin, as we live at the beach and are in the waters here almost daily.”

Continued

See photo here

Which is toughest... shark or crocodile? Finally we have an answer, as croc eats its fishy rival

It's an old age question pondered by some of the greatest minds in the playground. Who would win: a crocodile or a shark?

Now a British tourist has given a definitive answer to the riddle by capturing the moment one of the powerful reptiles munched on its aquatic rival.

Holidaymaker Peter Jones, 62, witnessed the savage moment when he embarked on a river cruise in Kakadu National Park in Australia's tropical Northern Territory.

As he travelled down the East Alligator River he was confronted by the sight of a massive saltwater crocodile scoffing on a helpless bull shark.

The intrepid tourist group bravely tried to get closer to the spectacle, but the coy crocodile slithered away with its man-eating prey.

Mr Jones, from Cambridge, told the Northern Territory News that after the boat left he saw the crocodile return to the bank with its dinner, before feasting on its catch.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2426699/Which-toughest--shark-crocodile-Finally-answer-giant-reptile-eats-fishy-rival.html#ixzz2feDjcEyL

Ancient 'Sea Monster' Swam Like a Shark

A massive marine lizard may have swum like a shark, new research suggests.

The top predators of the oceans during the late Cretaceous Era, mosasaurs, had skeletons that resembled lizards, but streamlined bodies and tail fins that resembled sharks, according to a study published today (Sept. 10) in the journal Nature Communications.

The findings suggest creatures relied on just a few types of bodies to swim quickly and easily through the deep oceans, and they evolved to have such body features because they're the most efficient from a physics perspective, said study co-author Johan Lindgren, a paleontologist at Lund University in Sweden.

Ancient sea lizards

Around 98 million years ago, sea levels were vastly higher than they are today, leaving many shallow pools — which would today be dips in the land — for creatures to inhabit. Land-dwelling lizards called mosasaurs soon expanded into these niches.

The massive lizards, which could grow to 49 feet (15 meters) long, gradually evolved more adaptations to the deep oceans and became the top predators, similar to killer whales today, Lindgren said. Mosasaurs disappeared about 66 million years ago, in the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

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Bizarre 'Sea Monster' Mystery Solved

The bizarre-looking body of an unidentified sea creature washed up on the shores of a Spanish beach last week, setting off wild speculation that a sea monster from the deep had been discovered.

The decomposing remains of the animal measured about 13 feet (4 meters) long, and appeared on the sand of the beach at Villaricos in Andalusia, Spain, on Aug. 15. Adding to the mystery was the appearance of a body part, separate from the creature's long torso, that looked like a pair of horns.

While early speculation led some experts to believe the body might be the remains of an oarfish, that theory was soon debunked. "That is definitely a shark skeleton," Dean Grubbs, an ichthyologist at Florida State University, told NBCNews.com. "The elements toward the back were confusing me, but those are the lower caudal-fin supports. The 'horns' are the scapulocoracoids, which support the pectoral fins."

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‘Turducken’ of the sea–scientists off Delaware catch shark within a shark - via D R Shoop

Researchers at the University of Delaware set out recently in the hope of recapturing tagged sand tiger sharks. They enticed a large female but it was the bizarre manner by which they captured the predator that left them shaking their heads in disbelief.

After casting a small fish called a menhaden, a small shark called a dogfish was quick to snatch the bait, only to be swallowed by the much larger sand tiger shark. “The dogfish was about 3 feet long and completely swallowed by the sand tiger shark,” states a post on the university’s ORB Lab Facebook page.

The researchers had captured a shark within a shark, which prompted Aaron Martens to comment: “There’s gotta be some kind of ‘turducken‘ label for this kind of situation.”

The ORB Lab is short for Ocean Exploration, Remote Sensing, Biogeography Lab.

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New shark species discovered off SC coast

Scientists have discovered a new species of shark in the ocean off South Carolina and have named it for the region where it was found.

The “Carolina hammerhead,” thought to reach 11 feet long and weigh about 400 pounds, has been identified cruising the waters at Bull’s Bay north of Charleston, St. Helena Sound near Beaufort and in the Charleston harbor.

But biologists suspect these hammerheads occur worldwide, since evidence of them has been found in the past from Brazil to the Indian Ocean. The number of Carolina hammerheads is thought to be small.

“It is a distinct species,’’ said William “Trey” Driggers, a marine scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division.

Driggers, a 45-year-old Sumter native and Clemson University graduate, was among a team of scientists with NOAA, the University of South Carolina, the University of New Orleans and the S.C. Department of Natural Resources who made the discovery after more than a decade of research.

Much of the work was done in the laboratory of USC professor Joseph Quattro, he said. Veterinarians in Columbia also collaborated on the discovery.

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Silly season Falmouth shark story makes the news

The silly season is upon us and true to form the national press are reporting that a great white shark is lurking in Cornish waters.

The Mirror is saying that fisherman Nigel Hodge, who happens to run a charter boat specialising in shark fishing, "watched in disbelief as a real-life Jaws tore apart a smaller blue shark on the end of his line".

With the "fearsome beast" leaving "devastating machete-like bite marks which an expert last night said could belong to the legendary man-eater"

The paper goes on to say that Nigel, 43, who was fishing 20 miles off the coast of Falmouth last week when the monster struck, said: “It was a terrifying sight. In over 30 years of fishing these waters I have never seen anything like it.”

The Mirror added that Nigel said: “It was almost impossible to hold, as we tugged and struggled. It was really heavy and we knew we had something massive. As we brought it in closer we could see there were actually two sharks on the line. One was twice as big as the other – about 10ft in length, dark grey on top with a white underbelly, just like a great white.

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Subway Shark Found on New York Train

Yes, it's Shark Week on the Discovery channel, but this is just a little too much.

Early Tuesday night in New York the conductor aboard a Ditmars-bound N train at Queensboro Plaza reported a shark aboard the train in car #8994, according to WABC. The shark was discovered by a subway passenger at the 8 th street station in Greenwich Village. Isvett Verde said that she was only going one stop, so she decided to stay on the train.

"I boarded an empty car on the N train at the 8th Street stop and it smelled extremely fishy. I assumed that's why it was empty, until I looked down and saw that poor strap-hanging dead shark," Verde told WABC. "I mean, I thought I'd seen it all, but even that was a bit much. I have no idea how it got there or how long it had been there."

Verde said that she took a photo of the shark, stayed on the train until it stopped at Union Square, then hopped out.

A Metropolitan Transit Authority supervisor confirmed to WABC that the shark was dead. It had been placed in a garbage bag and put in the trash. It is not clear how the shark got onto the subway car.

MTA spokesman joked about the sighting on Twitter on Wednesday.

"Latest on the shark on the N train: unconfirmed reports that the shark was headed home after a night of partying in Coney Island," Kevin Ortiz tweeted.

Earlier, he tweeted "Yes, folks this morning we removed a shark from an N train at Ditmars Blvd … and no, we're not investigating how it got there. :)."

Experts told WABC that they believe the shark is a smooth dogfish, which is a species of hound shark.

And yes, someone has already locked down the Twitter handle @NYCSubwayShark. The account already has over 400 followers.

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/subway-shark-found-york-train-105938867.html