AUTHOR=Cook Neil D. , Jenkins Abbie , Perry Sarah L. , Perkins Sarah E. , Cable Jo TITLE=Temporal niche partitioning as a potential mechanism for coexistence in two sympatric mesopredator sharks JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science VOLUME=11 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1443357 DOI=10.3389/fmars.2024.1443357 ISSN=2296-7745 ABSTRACT=
Global marine biodiversity declines require bold and ambitious plans to safeguard ecosystem services. Overfishing, habitat loss and projected climate impacts have yielded deleterious effects on marine predators, in particular, driving increasing threat of extinction for many shark species with implications for ecosystem health. Identifying and protecting critical habitat areas for sharks is fundamental to their protection, and may allow for species recovery. Here we use baited remote underwater video stations to investigate spatial and temporal patterns of habitat use by sharks in a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) that is centrally important to the regional blue economy in the UK, the Cardigan Bay SAC. Our results show heterogeneous spatial habitat use and temporal trends in habitat sharing between smallspotted catsharks