Case Study: White Shark Movements in the North Pacific Pelagic Ecosystem

The Biology and Ecology of the White Shark, Carcharodon Carcharias

“…With the exception of the open ocean excursions recorded by Boustany et al (2002Boustany et al ( , 2008, Bonfi l et al (2005), and Bruce et al (2006), tagged sharks have been resighted or recaptured in coastal waters. Coastal distances between tagging and resighting/recapture or those covered during satellite-based tracking have ranged up to 6,000 km and over periods of liberty up to 10 years (Bruce, 1992;Cliff et al, 1996b;Kohler et al, 1998;Malcolm et al, 2001;Bruce et al, 2006).…”

“…Taylor (1985) confi rmed records of white sharks from Hawaiian waters, and the species has been recorded at various other offshore islands, including Noumea and the Marshall and Easter Islands in the Pacifi c, and the Azores in the Atlantic (Burgess and Callahan, 1996;Fergusson, 1996;Compagno, 2001). Boustany et al (2002) reported the offshore movements of four out of six white sharks tagged with pop-up archival tags from coastal California into the western Pacifi c, with one individual moving as far as the Hawaiian Islands (see Boustany, 2007). In each case the shark remained entirely pelagic while moving between the surface and depths down to 650-680 m. Bruce and Stevens (2004) reported on two white sharks that moved into oceanic waters off Western Australia, one of which dived to depths of 570 m. Furthermore, a shark tagged off South Australia was reported captured in New Zealand waters (Bruce et al, 2006).…”

Introduction to Sharks of the Open Ocean

“…Oceanic waters are generally less productive and contain less biomass and less diversity than coastal waters. For example, blue sharks (Prionace glauca, Carcharhinidae) routinely cross the Atlantic (Kohler and Turner, 2008), and white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias, Lamnidae) tagged off the Pacifi c Coast of North America have traveled to the Hawaiian Islands (Boustany et al, 2002(Boustany et al, , 2008 and from South Africa to Western Australia (Bonfi l, 2005). Areas of high productivity can vary seasonally, or shift with oceanographic conditions, so that it is necessary for tuna, billfi shes, sharks, turtles, seabirds, and other large animals of the high seas to migrate long distances (Block et al, 2001).…”

Pelagic Sharks and the FAO International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks

“…Most States have no requirement to record shark catches or to provide a species breakdown of the catch from their fi sheries, including most pelagic fi sheries (FAO, 2000). Species such as blue (Prionace glauca, Carcharhinidae), shortfi n mako (Isurus oxyrinchus, Lamnidae), and oceanic whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus, Carcharhinidae) sharks are known to range across entire ocean basins (Stevens and Wayte, 1999;Boustany et al, 2008;Kohler and Turner, 2008), further complicating research, management, and monitoring (Baum and Myers, 2008). Although there is an overall lack of information on population status, enough is certainly known to warrant immediate management attention for pelagic shark stocks (Camhi, 2008).…”