Thursday, July 11, 2013

Is this a Spinner Shark?


From the Lautoka Fish market.
Click for plenty of detail!

To me, it looks like a common Blacktip.
I feel that I've seen this guy before, and the pinnae sure don't look breves to me!

BUT - does that anal fin have a black tip?
If so, brevis or not brevis, it is C. brevipinna as that's one of the principal diagnostic features differentiating it from C. limbatus, at least in the Caribbean where they are sympatric!
Or may it, gasp, be Jeremy's wayward tilstoni, see the description here???
Opinions?

And I'm still waiting for a correct answer to my last question!

5 comments:

Professor Pedantic said...

Approaching this intriguing question quadotomously, I would suggest, in descending order of plausibility:-

(1)limbatus
(2)a lost tilstoni
(3)a brevipinna that looks strangely limbati-tilstoniform
(4)a lost tilsoni

...But since tilsoni is a typo for tilstoni I must admit that the previously hypothesised quadotomy reduces to a mere triotomy.

OfficetoOcean said...

This is a difficult one but I'm inclined to say that's a Spinner. As far as I know the Spinner is not considered present in Fiji currently but could that be down to limited capture rates and misidentification?

The last post mentioned the guy saw them by a river mouth when he was surfing, so Spinner-like behaviour in a Spinner-esque environment would lend weight to that.

Interesting either way, they're a lovely shark, as are Blacktips :)

DaShark said...

Hmmmm professor,,,,

- quadrotomy?
- trichotomy?

Just asking!

Detail detail....

John Philp said...

Hey Mike,

This is great. I looked at the blog. Just to clarify, I'm pretty sure there were different types of sharks around that day and this photo I sent you may not have been the sharks that were spinning. Quite likely not.

Would love to come shark dive. Will have to do it in August as away for 3 weeks in Sydney from Tuesday.

Thanks again for coming back to me on this !
JOHN PHILP (the surfer)

DaShark said...

Thanks John!

Safe travels!