[Coral-List] New paper: first evidence of shark nursery area expansion due to rising ocean temperatures

[David Shiffman]

Hello! I am excited to get to share with you a new paper, published today
in Scientific Reports (I'm a coauthor, lead author is Dr. Charles Bangley
of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center).

We show evidence that bull sharks are now regularly using coastal North
Carolina waters as a nursery area, when they only very rarely did before
the last few years! The change is strongly correlated with rising ocean
temperatures- previously the northernmost bull shark nursery area was North
Florida.

While polewards range expansions as a result of changing environmental
temperature is a well-documented phenomenon, this is the first-ever case of
this happening with a large (and potentially dangerous) shark species in
the United States. The implications for the local coastal ecosystem, and
for local human-wildlife interactions, are huge!

The paper is available open access here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24510-z

A blog post/press release explaining it is available here:
http://www.southernfriedscience.com/is-a-changing-environment-bringing-baby-bull-sharks-to-north-carolina/

Please share with interested colleagues. Thank you!

Sincerely,



-- 

*David Shiffman, Ph.D. *
Marine Conservation Biologist and Science Writer
Liber Ero Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver,
B.C.

*e: *david.shiffman at gmail.com | *t: *@WhySharksMatter
<http://twitter.com/#!/WhySharksMatter> |
*b: *Southern Fried Science Blog <http://www.southernfriedscience.com/> |
*cv:*
*Online CV <http://DavidShiffmanCV.com>*