The basking shark, Cetorhinus maximus, from Florida and California, with comments on its biology and systematics.

Abstract

The known range of the basking shark is extended to the Gulf of Mexico by an adult female taken alive at Sarasota, Florida. Comparisons of some characters of the specimens are made with those of an adult male found in Drake's Bay, California and those of an immature specimen from the east coast of Florida. Although the Sarasota specimen differs in denticle form and in some other respects from basking sharks of the eastern North Atlantic and elsewhere, it is provisionally identified as Cetorhinus maximus (Gunnerus), here regarded as the only extant species of its genus and family. Reasons for the presence of the Sarasota specimen in warm shallow water 190 km from the continental shelf edge are postulated.