Jones et al.: Species compositions of elasmobranchs caught by three commercial fishing methods 
369 
Table 1 
Number of females and males and percentage contribution of females of each elasmobranch species (sex determined during regu- 
lar onboard observations) in the catches of trawl vessels fishing for prawns and scallops on the lower west coast of Australia. The 
total number of individuals of each species (including those whose sex could not be determined owing to logistic constraints) and 
the percent contribution of each species to the total elasmobranch catch are also given. Plain font* = byproduct species, i.e., those 
that are not targeted but usually retained; Bold font = bycatch species, i.e., those that are usually discarded. 
Common name 
Species name 
Female 
n 
Male 
n 
Female 
% 
Total 
n 
Total 
% 
Lobed stingaree 
Urolophus lobatus 
422 
288 
59.4 
851 
28.5 
Sparsely-spotted stingaree 
Urolophus paucimaculatus 
235 
349 
40.2 
726 
24.3 
Masked stingaree 
Trygonoptera personata 
84 
66 
56.0 
277 
9.3 
Western shovel nose ray 
Aptychotrema vincentiana 
124 
99 
55.6 
237 
7.9 
Port Jackson shark 
Heterodontus portusjacksoni 
112 
110 
50.5 
223 
7.5 
Southern fiddler ray 
Trygonorrhina dumerilii 
94 
118 
44.3 
220 
7.4 
Western shovelnose stingaree 
Trygonoptera mucosa 
23 
27 
46.0 
153 
5.1 
Southern eagle ray 
Myliobatis australis 
67 
81 
45.3 
148 
5.0 
Australian angelshark 
Squatina australis 
67 
66 
50.4 
135 
4.5 
Smooth stingray 
Dasyatis brevicaudata 
2 
6 
25.0 
8 
0.3 
Gummy shark* 
Mustelus antarcticus* 
4 
1 
80.0 
5 
0.2 
White-spotted guitarfish 
Rhynchobatus australiae 
1 
0 
100.0 
1 
< 0.1 
Spinner shark* 
Carcharhinus brevipinna * 
0 
1 
0 
1 
< 0.1 
Coffin ray 
Hypnos monopterygius 
0 
1 
0 
1 
< 0.1 
Total 
1235 
1213 
2986 
abundant species, which were all bycatch, consisted of 
three species of rays and the shark H. portusjacksoni 
and collectively contributed nearly a quarter of the 
individual elasmobranchs obtained by longlining. The 
other two targeted species, C. obscurus and F. macki, 
contributed only 3.8% and 0.9%, respectively, to the 
total catch taken by longlining. The 19 nontargeted spe- 
cies caught by longlining comprised eight species that 
were always discarded as bycatch and represented one 
quarter of the total catch. 
On the ordination plot, derived from the similarity 
matrix constructed by using percent contributions of the 
various species to the elasmobranch catches obtained 
by the three fishing methods, the samples for longlin- 
ing lie above those for gillnetting, and both of these lie 
to the right of the discrete group comprising the trawl 
samples (Fig. 2). One-way ANOSIM confirmed that 
the compositions of the samples obtained by the three 
fishing methods were significantly different (P=0.001, 
global R = 0.753). Pair-wise ANOSIM tests revealed 
that the compositions in the samples collected by each 
method differed significantly from those in the samples 
obtained by each other method (all PcO.OOl), and the R- 
statistic was similarly high for trawling vs. gillnetting 
(0.797) and trawling vs longlining (0.774) and greater 
than that for gillnetting vs longlining (0.515). 
The most important of the typifying species for the 
trawl samples, i.e., those that were most abundant and 
were found most frequently, comprised two ray spe- 
cies, A. vincentiana and Urolophus paucimaculatus, 
and two shark species, H. portusjacksoni and S. aus- 
tralis (Table 4). Heterodontus portusjacksoni and M. 
Figure 2 
Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) ordina- 
tion plot, derived from the matrix constructed from 
the percentage contribution (square root transformed) 
of each elasmobranch species recorded during each of 
the regular onboard observations of the catches of com- 
mercial trawling (open circles), gillnetting (gray circles), 
and longlining vessels (black circles). 
antarcticus were also important typifying species for 
the elasmobranch catches taken by both gillnetting 
and longlining. Carcharhinus obscurus is a particularly 
important typifying species for the gillnet samples and 
the same is true for the bycatch ray species Dasyatis 
brevicaudata for the longline samples. Relatively greater 
