Abstract
Many species of sharks form aggregations around oceanic islands, yet their levels of residency and their site specificity around these islands may vary. In some cases, the waters around oceanic islands have been designated as marine protected areas, yet the conservation value for threatened shark species will depend greatly on how much time they spend within these protected waters. Eighty-four scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini Griffith & Smith), were tagged with acoustic transmitters at Cocos Island between 2005–2013. The average residence index, expressed as a proportion of days present in our receiver array at the island over the entire monitoring period, was 0.52±0.31, implying that overall the sharks are strongly associated with the island. Residency was significantly greater at Alcyone, a shallow seamount located 3.6 km offshore from the main island, than at the other sites. Timing of presence at the receiver locations was mostly during daytime hours. Although only a single individual from Cocos was detected on a region-wide array, nine hammerheads tagged at Galapagos and Malpelo travelled to Cocos. The hammerheads tagged at Cocos were more resident than those visiting from elsewhere, suggesting that the Galapagos and Malpelo populations may use Cocos as a navigational waypoint or stopover during seasonal migrations to the coastal Central and South America. Our study demonstrates the importance of oceanic islands for this species, and shows that they may form a network of hotspots in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.
Highlights
Oceanic islands and seamounts provide important habitats in the pelagic environment for many marine species, often resulting in biological “hotspots” characterized by a greater diversity and abundance of pelagic life [1]
S. lewini is listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species [11] due to reduction in population sizes based on studies over multiple ocean basins [12,13,14]
We explore the occurrence of long-range movements to other Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the region, as a key aspect in improving understanding of the hammerhead shark movement ecology, and for designing effective conservation [35]
Summary
Oceanic islands and seamounts provide important habitats in the pelagic environment for many marine species, often resulting in biological “hotspots” characterized by a greater diversity and abundance of pelagic life [1]. S. lewini is listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species [11] due to reduction in population sizes based on studies over multiple ocean basins [12,13,14] This coastal-pelagic species is found in temperate and tropical oceans throughout the planet [15], and is known to form big aggregations around oceanic islands [15,16,17,18,19]
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