Cocos Island may be newest home for shark species typically found in Indo-Pacific

Courtesy / Carlos Hiller / La Nacion

July 9^th, 2015 (InsideCostaRica.com) A shark species that was rarely ever seen by divers off Costa Rica’s Cocos Island may now be calling the waters home, according to researchers at Misión Tiburón.

Divers are increasingly reporting sightings of the Blacktip Reef Shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus, not to be confused with the common Blacktip Shark, Carcharhinus limbatus), and have captured three photographs of the species so far this year, the organization told the daily La Nacion.

The species is normally found no closer than 5,000 kilometers from Cocos Island, in the nearshore waters of the Indo-Pacific.  In the Indian Ocean, it occurs from South Africa to the Red Sea, including Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, and from there eastward along the coast of the Indian Subcontinent to Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, the Andaman Islands, and the Maldives. In the Pacific Ocean, it is found from southern China and the Philippines to Indonesia, northern Australia and New Caledonia.

The first sighting of the species at Cocos was at the island’s Wafer Bay in 2012.

Not only is the shark a new arrival to Cocos, but the 2012 sighting was the first report of the shark in the entire Eastern Tropical Pacific, which stretches from Mexico to Peru.

Andres Lopez, a biologist with Misión Tiburón, told La Nacion that perhaps a “drastic change in the environment or in ocean currents” might explain the sharks’ arrival to Cocos.