Temperature and depth associations of porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus

• Main Authors: S. E. Campana, W. N. Joyce
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Lamna nasus; Porbeagle
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.576.6259; http://www.marinebiodiversity.ca/shark/english/document/porbeagle temperature.pdf

The porbeagle (Lamna nasus) is a large fast-swimming pelagic shark found at high latitudes in both hemi-spheres. To examine the influence of temperature on porbeagle distribution, a detailed analysis of the rela-tionship between catch rate, temperature, depth and location was carried out based on 420 temperature profiles taken during commercial fishing operations. More than half of the porbeagle were caught at tem-peratures of 5–10C (at the depth of the hook); the mean temperature at gear of 7.4C differed very little among seasons. Most of the spring fishing took place near fronts, although the affinity with fronts was not evident in the fall. Temperature at depth was a sig-nificant modifier of catch rate when included in a generalized linear model controlling for the effects of location, fishing vessel, month and year. However, sea surface temperature was a poor predictor of catch rate. The similarity between environmental and catch-weighted cumulative distribution functions confirmed suggestions that fishers sought out the most appropri-ate temperature range in which to set their gear. As porbeagle are among the most cold tolerant of pelagic shark species, we suggest that they have evolved to take advantage of their thermoregulating capability by allowing them to seek out and feed on abundant coldwater prey in the absence of non-thermoregulat-ing competitors. Key words: catch rate, cumulative distribution function, distribution, migration