South African Elasmobranch Monitoring

All skates, all chimaera and some sharks are oviparous (egg-laying). Once the egg has been deposited the mother does not invest any further parental care. The embryo is now on its own and nothing but a thin, leathery capsule protects the developing skate or shark until it is ready to hatch. Because shark eggs are attached to immotile seafans, seaweed or rocks, they are easy prey even for the smallest and slowest organisms given they can chew or bore through the capsule. Some

Sharks and rays commonly wash out on our beaches. There are a number of potential reasons for such strandings, but in most cases it is difficult to pinpoint the cause. The most common stranding factors are: UPWELLING EVENTS (common along the entire South African coastline) The sudden decrease of water temperature during upwelling events can impact the ability to maintain an elevated body core temperature and heart rate. Particularly young and small sharks with a high surface

In today’s day and age, the bridge between scientists and the public is becoming ever smaller. Historically, scientists would stick within the confines of their ivory towers and only publish their work in scientific journals or in books that would be incredibly difficult for the average Joe to understand. For example the following is a quote from arguably one of the most popular pieces of scientific literature, “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin: “As natural selection

We are a week into the New Year and thought it is time to celebrate a new exciting feature: The interactive ELMO Map! It illustrates all the data that we are receiving on eggcase finds as well as Elasmobranch sightings in two separate layers. To explore our Elasmobranch populations, use the zoom function and click on the symbol for details of every data entry. As you will see, there are still large gaps outside of Plettenberg Bay - so please help us to paint an even better pi