Occurrence of the Thresher Alopias vulpinus from the Northeastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey
Published online on 13. April 2015
Occurrence of the Thresher Alopias vulpinus (Bonnaterre, 1788) from the Northeastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey
Deniz Ergüden, Mevlüt Gürlek, Cemal Turan
ABSTRACT:
A single male thresher, Alopias vulpinus (Bonnaterre, 1788), measuring 392 cm length and about weighing 180 kg was accidentally captured by purse seine in Iskenderun Bay (Cevlik coast) on 29 April 2014 at a depth of 33 m. To date A. vulpinus is not reported from the Iskenderun Bay (NE Mediterranean, Turkey). The present paper reports the first occurrence of A. vulpinus from the northeastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey.
BIHAREAN BIOLOGIST 9 (1): online first, Article No.: 141209
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Note by Shark Year Magazine :
According to the photos published in D. Ergüden et al., this thresher shark appears to be Specimen No. 08 in our related post on noteworthy Mediterranean shark records ( see here ).
Although the date of catch (29. April 2014) does not correspond to the ‘reported date’ of our source (17. April 2014).
D. Ergüden et al. provides a more accurate specification of the shark’s size. The measured total length is 3,95 metres, which is over 0,5 m less than the estimate given in our media sources. The difference between the reported and the measured weight (in Ergüden et al.) is even more significant.
According to D. Ergüden et al., the sex of this specimen has been determined as ‘male’ with a reported clasper length of 8.1 cm (Tab.1).
Last year, we determined the sex as female. Because we were unable to find any claspers in the various (but often indistinct) images that we used for our article ( for example at the end of the YouTube video here ).
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