Washed-Up Beach Shark Identified As 'Porbeagle'

October 8, 2009

Release from: Patrick Anderson
Gloucester Daily Times

The shark that washed up dead Monday morning on Pavilion Beach has been identified as a porbeagle shark by staff from the Whale Center of New England — not a mako shark as first suspected.

Porbeagles are similar in appearance and closely related to makos, but are more common in the cold water of the Gulf of Maine than makos, which prefer warmer temperatures.

Jenny Allen, an intern at the Whale Center dispatched to Pavilion Beach to make sure the corpse was not a marine mammal, sent a photograph of the porbeagle to a shark expert at the University of Miami (Florida) with whom she had worked while studying marine biology. He confirmed it was a porbeagle.

"I first thought it was a mako when I saw it," Allen said yesterday. "The main way to tell the difference is the white spot on the dorsal fin. Also, the eyes are bigger and the body is stockier."

Porbeagle sharks are fast swimming, thickly built, fish-eating sharks found in northern waters on both sides of the north Atlantic, as well as in distinct populations in the southern Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.

In Europe, the porbeagle is considered critically endangered from fishing, but is doing better off the North American coast.

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service listed the porbeagle a "species of concern" in 2006, due to overfishing in the latter half of the 20th century.

Allen said the porbeagle that turned up in Gloucester was a male, probably between 2 and 3 years old.

No one has come forward with information on how the Gloucester porbeagle wound up on Pavilion Beach, and Allen said the idea that the fish had been caught accidentally by a fisherman and then discarded makes sense.

"Porbeagle shark is pretty common around here," Allen said. "When you are fishing for big game fish, you will turn up a porbeagle. It is a relatively common occurrence."