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Feeding Ecology of Hammerhead Sharks
Sharks were caught, anesthetized, measured, weighed, and stomach contents retrieved.
Most of the sharks caught were between 50-60cm and weighed around 600g. Larger
sharks were caught on rare occasions:
Stomach contents were preserved in ethanol and taken back to the lab to be sorted, identified, and weighed. The most common food items were a species of snapping shrimp (Alpheus malabaricus), and a gobie (Oxyuricthys lonchotus). This low diversity of the diet can be attributed to the low species diversity of the bay floor, where the pups live and feed.
Sharks were also kept in captivity to study the rate of digestion. Rate of
digestion was then combined with diet data to estimate the rate of food consumption of
these sharks in their natural habitat. This site was
created by Timothy Fitzgerald and is maintained
Nick
Whitney |
There has long been an interest in
what sharks eat -- many studies list the stomach contents of sharks in an effort to
understand their diet. But very few studies have attempted to quantify the amount
of food that sharks consume on a daily basis. Since sharks are at the top of their
food chain, they may influence the population structure of species lower
in that food chain. Understanding exactly what and how much sharks eat can give us
a much better understanding of how they interact with and affect their environment.
Due to the abundance of juvenile scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) in Kaneohe
Bay, it was possible to conduct a study that examined the feeding ecology of this species.
Some sharks, including scalloped hammerheads, regurgitate by
everting their stomach (turning it inside-out). Taking advantage of this facet of
the animal's biology provides an easy, non-lethal method for retrieving and studying
stomach contents.
