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: *[email protected] | *t: *@WhySharksMatter <http://twitter.com/#!/WhySharksMatter> | *b: *Southern Fried Science Blog <http://www.southernfriedscience.com/> | *cv:* *Online CV <http://DavidShiffmanCV.com>*
