Shark food

Nothing terribly dramatic here, but it's about sharks eating stuff - therefore, we've gotta talk about it. A new study in the Journal of Fish Biology looks at the diet of three smallish sharks found in relatively deep waters in the Cantabrian Sea off the coast of Spain. The three species, blackmouth catsharks (Galeus melastomus), velvet-belly lantern sharks (Etmopterus spinax), and birdbeak dogsharks (Deania calcea), were found to feed opportunistically on available foods including fish and crustaceans.

Perhaps more interesting is the manner in which the sharks have partioned the habitat available to them. The researchers looked at a samples collected down the slope of a bank, from the top at a depth of about 500 m depth down to a basin with depths over 1,000 m. The blackmouth catshark (that's him up top) and velvet-belly lantern shark occupy the top of the bank. In the deeper parts of the basin, however, the lantern shark is replaced by the birdbeak dogshark. In the deepest parts of the basin, the catsharks and dogsharks are able to coexist without competition, as they have specialized on different types of foods in those deep waters.