6 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



the British Museum of Natural Histoiy, aUhough 

 specimens from the western Atlantic were pres- 

 ent. Tortonese noted (1938) that there are two 

 specimens in the Musee di Trieste collected in 

 1869 and 1871 and, after examination of speci- 

 mens labeled inilberti from the western Atlantic 

 in the Museum at Paris and the British Museum, 

 he indicated (in 1951) that he regards milhertl 

 as a synonym of phi?nieus. 



FIELD RECOGNITION 



Eulamia mWbei'ti is commonplace in appear- 

 ance. It has neither unusual color markings nor 

 spectacular structural features. The length of 

 the shark at maturity, 7 feet, makes the species 

 too large for the biological collector and too small 

 to interest the journalist. It is necessary to 

 search for distinguishing features (fig. 1). The 

 opportunity for comparison of series under ordi- 

 nary circumstances is negligible, and almost all 

 identifications of the larger sharks are necessarily 

 made in tlie field. The suggestion that many of 

 tlae presently recognized species of carcharhinid 

 sharks are not in fact separable from one another 

 but .should be regarded as unidentifiable parts of 

 a species complex has been advanced in specula- 



tive conversation by some of my friends who are 

 ichthyologists. This view may easily develop 

 from unsatisfactory attempts to make identifica- 

 tions with methods which are quite adequate and 

 successful in application to teleosts but fall short 

 when applied to sharks, and particularly to car- 

 charhinid sharks. E. milberti, in waters off the 

 United States, is readily defined and problems 

 concerning it are not complicated by the existence 

 of geographic or environmental races or sub- 

 species, insofar as the available evidence shows. 

 This is apparently not true of some of the other 

 carcharhinids where separate populations may be 

 defined on the basis of morphological diflferences 

 shown in the analysis of adequate series from 

 different areas. 



The keys and descriptions given by Bigelow and 

 Schroeder (19-18) are adequate for the identifica- 

 tion of the carcharhinid sharks of the western 

 North Atlantic excepting Eulamia altima, which 

 was described (Springer, 1950) after publication 

 of this work. Nevertheless, identifications need 

 to be made carefully because of the general struc- 

 tural similarity of the species which look alike on 

 superficial examination. Sharks of the genus 

 Eulainia in the falciforjnh-springeri group are 



Figure 1. — Eulamia milhcHi in .an exhibition tank. Tho high, triangular first dorsal fin, nonfalcate pectoral fins, and 

 relatively high second dorsal and anal fins, nearly equal to one another in area, are characteristic of the species. (Phor 

 tograph courtesy of Marine Studios, Marineland, St. Augustine, Fla.) 



