Shark Nursery Grounds of the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast Waters of the United States

Preface

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569810.fmatter

Shark nurseries are geographically discrete parts of a species range where parturition occurs and juvenile sharks spend the first months (temperate regions) to years (tropical regions) of their life (Springer 1967; Castro 1987, 1993). Bass (1978) expands this definition of shark nurseries by identifying two types of nursery areas: primary and secondary. Primary nursery areas are “where the young sharks are actually born and spend the first part of their lives” and secondary nursery areas are “inhabited by slightly older but not yet adolescent or mature sharks” (Bass 1978). For many shark species, primary and secondary nurseries overlap spatially and temporally.