Young-of-the-year sandbar shark, Carcharhinus plumbeus (Carcharhiniformes: Carcharhinidae), caught in Iskenderun Bay

Abstract

On 26th of December 2019, a sandbar shark, Carcharhinus plumbeus (Nardo, 1827), was incidentally captured by a stationary-net, deployed nearly 40 m of depth, off Arsuz coast. Because of the presence of a partially healed birth mark, examined sandbar shark was considered as young-of-the-year specimen. Arsuz coast and in a broad perspective Iskenderun Bay can be served as a nursery ground for C. plumbeus, a promising possibility for the survival of an endangered shark species in the Mediterranean Sea. The leucism seen on the examined specimen was one of the very rare examples of an atypical character reported for C. plumbeus.