Three endangered leopard sharks have been spotted mating together in a rare event caught on camera by an Australian researcher.<\/p>\n
University of the Sunshine Coast marine biologist Hugo Lassauce captured the unique footage of two male sharks mating with a female in waters off New Caledonia.<\/p>\n
The discovery is an indicator that the area may be an important breeding ground for the species, which is at risk from overfishing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr Lassauce said the team celebrated the scientific and conservation significance of his video as soon as he swam back to the boat. (Supplied: Hugo Lassauce)<\/p>\n
Dr Lassauce said his research team had been at the location for several weeks to record the sharks’ behaviour before he captured the surprise moment.<\/p>\n
“We have been seeing and observing some courtship events [over several weeks] where the male will try a little bit with the female, but nothing happened,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This day it just happened \u2026 I saw the two male sharks grabbing the female’s fin and I knew the mating behaviour [was] coming soon.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hugo Lassauce had snorkelled with the sharks off the New Caledonian coast every week for a year as part of the aquarium\u2019s monitoring program.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 (Supplied: University of the Sunshine Coast)<\/p>\n
Dr Lassauce said his research was part of a global project run by the ReShark collective, which is aiming to assist the leopard shark’s repopulation in South-East Asia, where it is near extinction.<\/p>\n
“Our project is studying this shark is to try to inform a conservation program and implement measures that can protect them the best way possible,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Trying to reintroduce the species you need more information on the biology and ecology of the shark.<\/p>\n
“We need to know more about their behaviour, about how far they can swim, how they reproduce … to make sure their reintroduction into [new] environments can be a success.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Leopard sharks are found in coastal waters across the Indo-West Pacific region, from Africa\u2019s east coast to the Pacific Islands and including Australia. (Supplied: Hugo Lassauce)<\/p>\n
His research colleague Christine Dudgeon said the leopard shark had become endangered in parts of their habitat in the Asia Pacific.<\/p>\n
“Outside of Australia \u2014 where they are quite healthy \u2014 the species is considered endangered due mostly to overfishing. \u00a0Not just for fins but for other products, including a more recent discovery of the use of their skin for lining walls in luxury yachts, ” Dr Dudgeon said.<\/p>\n
“I have not seen leopard sharks mating in the wild, I have seen some photographs of pre-mating behaviour but not the whole sequence, so I found this extremely interesting.”<\/p>\n
She said the discovery would help them understand the breeding habits of the sharks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three endangered leopard sharks have been spotted mating together in a rare event caught on camera by an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[149783,149782,70,16,15,149781,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-443243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-hugo-lassauce","9":"tag-leopard-sharks","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-university-of-the-sunshine-coast","14":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115247906164841925","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}