An empirical test of the ‘shark nursery area concept’ in Texas bays using a long-term fisheries-independent data set

AB Aquatic Biology Contact the journal Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections AB 11:65-76 (2010) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/ab00290 An empirical test of the ‘shark nursery area concept’ in Texas bays using a long-term fisheries-independent data set John T. Froeschke1,4,*, Gregory W. Stunz1, Blair Sterba-Boatwright2, Mark L. Wildhaber3 1Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies and Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, Corpus Christi, Texas 78412, USA 2Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, Corpus Christi, Texas 78412, USA 3Columbia Environmental Research Center, U.S. Geological Survey, 4200 New Haven Road, Columbia, Missouri 65201, USA 4Present address: Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, 2203 N. Lois Ave., Suite 1100, Tampa, Florida 33607, USA *Email: john.froeschke@gulfcouncil.org ABSTRACT: Using a long-term fisheries-independent data set, we tested the ‘shark nursery area concept’ proposed by Heupel et al. (2007) with the suggested working assumptions that a shark nursery habitat would: (1) have an abundance of immature sharks greater than the mean abundance across all habitats where they occur; (2) be used by sharks repeatedly through time (years); and (3) see immature sharks remaining within the habitat for extended periods of time. We tested this concept using young-of-the-year (age 0) and juvenile (age 1+ yr) bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas from gill-net surveys conducted in Texas bays from 1976 to 2006 to estimate the potential nursery function of 9 coastal bays. Of the 9 bay systems considered as potential nursery habitat, only Matagorda Bay satisfied all 3 criteria for young-of-the-year bull sharks. Both Matagorda and San Antonio Bays met the criteria for juvenile bull sharks. Through these analyses we examined the utility of this approach for characterizing nursery areas and we also describe some practical considerations, such as the influence of the temporal or spatial scales considered when applying the nursery role concept to shark populations. KEY WORDS: Bull shark · Nursery · Essential Fish Habitat · Gulf of Mexico Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Froeschke JT, Stunz GW, Sterba-Boatwright B, Wildhaber ML (2010) An empirical test of the ‘shark nursery area concept’ in Texas bays using a long-term fisheries-independent data set. Aquat Biol 11:65-76. https://doi.org/10.3354/ab00290Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in AB Vol. 11, No. 1. Online publication date: November 10, 2010 Print ISSN: 1864-7782; Online ISSN: 1864-7790 Copyright © 2010 Inter-Research.