Day Seven: Epaulette shark

I’ll be honest with you; until I started doing research for this blog, I had never heard of the Epaulette shark. So today, we learn together!

Statistics

• Typically 27-35 inches long
• Common in Australian waters
• Found in shallow water

These are some pretty cool looking sharks. The colors seem very vivid from what I can tell in the pictures.

Feeding

They are opportunistic predators, and their prey items include worms, small fishes and crabs. Something I found interesting in my reading is that, unlike other sharks, they will chew their food for up to 10 minutes. They are of no danger to humans, and are easily caught by beach goers because of their slow movement and their fearless nature. They hunt using primarily their sense of smell and electro-receptive senses. It is capable of sucking prey into its mouth.

Reproduction

Unlike the other sharks I’ve blogged about, this shark does not give birth to live pups. Mating takes place from July until December. The female drops her egg capsules two at a time every 14 days, producing a total of 20–50 eggs per year. The young emerge after 120–130 days, at a length of 5½ to 6 inches.

Interesting Facts

The epaulette shark moves by seemingly walking, bending its body from side-to-side and pushing off of the substrate with its paddle-shaped pectoral and pelvic fins. The shark only swims to escape from a threat, and then not very far.

Epaulette sharks are found in shallow water to a maximum depth 160 ft, and are often seen in water barely deep enough to cover their bodies.

Adult epaulette sharks are beige to brownish above with many widely-spaced brown spots and subtle darker bands. There is a very large black spot ringed in white located behind each pectoral fin; this pair of spots are the origin of this shark's common name.

Because plants in tide pools don’t produce oxygen at night, creatures that live there use up all or most of the oxygen during the night. Epaulette sharks caught in tide pools by the receding tide can turn off enough body functions to survive several hours with little or no oxygen.

Video of Epaulette Shark

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaulette_shark#Description
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/AnimalDetails.aspx?id=780268