Feeding Behavior in Three Species of Sharks

THIS REPORT concerns a study of the feeding behavior in three species of sharks: Carcharhinus menisorrah Miiller and Henle, the grey shark (Fig. 1), Carcharhinus melanopterus Quoyand Gaimard, the blacktip shark (Fig. 2), both of the family Carcharhinidae; and Triaenodon obesus Riippell, the whitetip shark (Fig. 3), of the family Triakidae. The study was conducted in the lagoon at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands, during the summers of 1959 and 1960. It was a segment of a broad program of investigation of shark behavior in which laboratory and field work were coordinated whenever possible. The overall program, conducted at both the Eniwetok Marine Biological Laboratory and the Hawaii Marine Laboratory, Coconut Island, Hawaii, was under the direction of Dr. Albert 1. Tester, with financial support from the Office of Naval Research (Contract Nom 2756(00), Project NR 104503). Observations of sharks in their natural environment have been the basis for most of the shark literature which is available today and yet comparatively little has been offered toward a realistic understanding of shark behavior. Most of this material has been written for popular consumption and is therefore oriented toward the sensational rather than the scientific. We do find scientifically oriented accounts in the literature (as for example, Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Hass, 1959; Limbaugh, 1958; and Wright, 1948) but these observations are limited largely to incidental encounters. A critical study of shark behavior, undertaken with planned experiments in the sharks' natural