Record of the Shark Carcharhinus longimanus. 
Accompanied by Naucrates and Remora^ 
from the East-Central Pacific^ 
Carl L. Hubbs^ 
In their masterly treatise on the sharks 
of the western North Atlantic, Bigelow and 
Schroeder (1948: 354-364, figs. 64-65), in 
untangling some complicated synonymies, 
showed that the pelagic species commonly 
known as Carcharhinus lamia (Risso) cannot 
bear this name, but should be called C 
longimanus (Poey). The literature is in such 
confusion that they were unable to verify the 
occurrence of this species in any ocean other 
than the Atlantic. It is therefore gratifying to 
obtain evidence promptly that it also inhabits 
the eastern tropical Pacific. This evidence is 
provided in the form of a photograph of an 
adult female specimen caught at Lat. 08° 16' 
N., Long. 125° 43' W., by A. J. Carsola and 
Jeremiah F. Black of the United States Navy 
Electronics Laboratory, on the ship "Serrano. ’ 
This picture (Fig. 1) corresponds very closely 
with Bigelow and Schroeder’s figure of an 
adult female, especially in the highly diagnos- 
tic features of the broadly rounded first dorsal 
fin, the markedly enlarged and round-tipped 
pectoral fin, the convex posterior border of the 
lower caudal lobe, the size and position of 
the anal and second dorsal fins, the extremely 
short snout in front of the nostrils, and the 
coloration. There can be virtually no doubt as 
to the identification. 
^Contributions from the Scripps Institution of Ocean- 
ography, New Series, No. 493. Manuscript received 
February 1, 1950. 
^Professor of Biology, Scripps Institution of Ocean- 
ography, University of California, La Jolla. 
^Thanks are due E. R. Anderson of the United States 
Navy Electronics Laboratory for the transmission of 
data, photograph, and specimen. 
The lack of previous records from the 
eastern Pacific (see Beebe and Tee- Van, 1941, 
and Fowler, 1944) is explicable, for nearly all 
previous collecting has been near shore, and 
Bigelow and Schroeder indicate that this 
species is more strictly pelagic than any other 
in the Atlantic and is more definitely tropical 
than most of them. The new Pacific record 
station lies far off Mexico and east-southeast 
of the Hawaiian Islands. 
The circumstances of the capture of the 
Pacific specimen are given in the log of the 
"Serrano,” as follows: 
27 May 1949, 1516 PST. A gray shark with 
white fin and tail tips was observed swimming 
around the ship about this time; three fish, 
each about one foot long and decorated by 
transverse black and silver stripes maintained 
formation with the shark, one being about a 
foot in front of him, another just below his 
body mid-section and another just above him. 
The shark was baited with a light hook and 
line, shot, and pulled onto deck (see picture). 
The banded fish were of course Naucrates 
ductor (Linnaeus). Like the Carcharhinus that 
they were accompanying, the pilotfish are re- 
ferable to a circum tropical species. It is true 
that Fowler (1905: 62-65, fig. 3) described 
the Pacific form as a distinct species, Nau- 
crates polysarcus, partly on the basis of dif- 
ferences pointed out by Gill (1862: 440-441), 
but it now seems likely that the distinction 
was based on juvenile characters. The sup- 
posedly deeper body and the longer fins may 
well be characters of the young. Meek and 
Hildebrand (1925: 401) stated that "the 
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