Tropical Eastern Pacific Records of the Prickly Shark, Echinorhinus cookei (Chondrichthyes: Echinorhinidae)
Published on 06. March 2011
Early view paper :Douglas J. Long, John E. McCosker, Shmulik Blum, Avi Klapfer.
ABSTRACT:
Most records of the prickly shark, Echinorhinus cookei Pietschmann, 1928 are from
temperate and subtropical areas of the Pacific Rim, with few records from the tropics. This
seemingly disjunct distribution led some authors to consider E. cookei to have an antitropical
distribution. Unreported museum specimens and underwater observations of E. cookei from Cocos
Island, Costa Rica, the Galápagos Islands, and northern Peru confirm their occurrence in the tropical
eastern Pacific, and combined with other published records from the eastern Pacific, establish a
continuous, pan-hemispheric eastern Pacific distribution.
Pacific Science, vol. 65, In press