Discard Mortality of Carcharhinid Sharks in the Florida Commercial Shark Fishery. Report period: 09/01/2013 - 2/28/2014.

Abstract

The ongoing study is the first to quantify post-release mortality and sub-lethal behavioral effects of capture on sandbar (Carcharhinus plumbeus) and blacktip sharks (C. limbatus) caught in the Florida commercial shark fishery through the novel use of acceleration data loggers (ADLs). We are also pairing our results from the ADL data with blood biochemistry values from the same animals to investigate the potential for physiological parameters to accurately predict post-release outcomes. This is one of the first studies to directly correlate blood stress values with post-release outcomes by sampling the same animals which are tagged, and will be the first to provide these estimates for a large number of sharks.