Bioaccumulated trace element toxicity in commercially harvested bronze whaler sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) of South Africa.

Shark meat consumption may pose a significant risk to human health as high levels of toxic pollutants bioaccumulate in muscular tissue. Commercial harvest of Carcharhinus brachyurus meat in South Africa is estimated at 100-300 filleted tons per annum. Muscle tissue samples from 41 sharks were collected from the southern and eastern coastlines of South Africa in 2022 and analysed for 10 trace elements and 8 polychlorinated biphenyl congeners.

A Mozambican marine protected area provides important habitat for vulnerable pelagic sharks.

Pelagic sharks play key roles in marine ecosystems, but are increasingly threatened by human extraction, habitat degradation and mismanagement. We investigated the use of protected and unprotected coastal habitats by bull (Carcharhinus leucas) and oceanic blacktip (Carcharhinus limbatus) sharks in southern Mozambique. Five INNOVASEA VR2W-69 kHz acoustic receivers were positioned in the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park (BANP) as well as one to the south of the park's boundaries.

The extinct shark was a transoceanic superpredator: Inferences from 3D modeling.

Although shark teeth are abundant in the fossil record, their bodies are rarely preserved. Thus, our understanding of the anatomy of the extinct remains rudimentary. We used an exceptionally well-preserved fossil to create the first three-dimensional model of the body of this giant shark and used it to infer its movement and feeding ecology.

Are you really what you eat? Stomach content analysis and stable isotope ratios do not uniformly estimate dietary niche characteristics in three marine predators.

Calculation of dietary niche characteristics using stable isotopes has become a popular approach to understand the functional role of taxa across food webs. An underlying assumption of this approach is that stable isotopes accurately reflect the dietary breadth of a species over a temporal duration defined by tissue-specific isotopic turnover rates. In theory, dietary niche estimates derived from fast turnover rate tissues (e.