Abstract

Other than the suspected inshore and offshore movements of coastal sharks into the north central Gulf of Mexico in Other than the suspected inshore and offshore movements of coastal sharks into the north central Gulf of Mexico in Other than the suspected inshore and offshore movements of coastal sharks into the north central Gulf of Mexico in Other than the suspected inshore and offshore movements of coastal sharks into the north central Gulf of Mexico in early spring and late fall, little is known about their movement patterns within this region. One objective of an ongoing study is to elucidate short and long-term movement patterns of coastal sharks within the north central Gulf of Mexico using tag-recapture techniques. To date, 2,156 coastal sharks representing nine species have been tagged in two previous shark studies (1998-2000, 2004-2006) in Mississippi coastal waters. The Atlantic sharpnose shark (n = 1,148) was the most abundant species tagged, followed by blacktip (n = 478), finetooth (n = 336), bull (n = 72), bonnethead (n = 46), blacknose (n = 35), spinner (n = 31), scalloped hammerhead (n = 6), and sandbar (n = 4). Eighteen sharks have been recaptured (0.008%) to date, representing Atlantic sharpnose (n = 14, 1.2 %), bull (n = 2, 2.8 %), blacknose (n = 1, 2.9 %), and bonnethead (n = 1, 2.2 %). The Atlantic sharpnose shark traveled the furthest (n = 110.3 miles) and was at liberty the longest (n = 598 days) of any species, however, the bonnethead shark obtained the highest rate of movement (n = 1.43 miles/day). Currently, our results are very limited, however, a cooperative tagging program with a selected group of fisher’s will be implemented in 2007 to supplement the tagging efforts.

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