Dietary overlap of carcharhinid sharks in the Gulf of Papua
Leontine Baje
A B * , Andrew Chin B , William T. White C D and Colin A. Simpfendorfer B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A National Fisheries Authority, National Capital District, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
B Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture & College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, Qld, Australia.
C CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, Hobart, Tas., Australia.
D CSIRO Australian National Fish Collection, National Research Collections Australia, Hobart, Tas., Australia.
Marine and Freshwater Research 73(5) 605-614 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF21212
Submitted: 9 June 2021 Accepted: 8 January 2022 Published: 11 February 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Assessing the feeding patterns of sharks provides insight into ecological interactions. Three coastal sharks are common by-catch in the Gulf of Papua prawn fishery in Papua New Guinea. The diets of Carcharhinus coatesi (n = 122), Rhizoprionodon acutus (n = 83) and Rhizoprionodon taylori (n = 177) were assessed using stomach content analysis. Teleosts, crustaceans and molluscs were the main prey. Percentage frequency of occurrence (%FO) and percentage frequency by number (%N) were computed to describe dietary compositions. Non-metric multidimensional scaling and Morisita Index determined the level of feeding overlap. Rhizoprionodon taylori was a generalist feeder having the broadest diet, R. acutus was the most selective feeder, preying predominantly on teleosts and C. coatesi consumed the greatest proportion of crustaceans that increased with size. The pairwise ANOSIM tests showed significant difference in dietary compositions of R. acutus and R. taylori (P = 0.1%, R = 0.318) and R. acutus and C. coatesi (P = 0.1%, R = 0.589), which indicate potential resource partitioning. Further work should aim to adequately characterise diets, improve prey identification and investigate spatial and temporal resource use patterns. Understanding ecological processes informs ecosystem approaches fisheries management.
Keywords: carcharhinid sharks, Carcharhinus coatesi, coastal shark diet, fisheries management, Gulf of Papua Prawn Fishery, GoPPF, Rhizoprionodon acutus, Rhizoprionodon taylori, shark by-catch.
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