344 
Fishery Bulletin 11 6(3-4) 
S. dumeril by Le Sueur (1818) was “probably Florida.” 
Similarly, Bigelow and Schroeder (1948) stated that 
one of the original specimens examined by Le Sueur 
(1818) in his original description of the species was 
possibly collected off of eastern Florida. 
The speculations of Jordan and Evermann (1896) 
and Bigelow and Schroeder (1948) were almost cer¬ 
tainly based on one of Le Sueur’s syntypes that were 
collected by Titian Peale, an artist and naturalist, 
who participated in the 1817 Florida Expedition of the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). 
The description of S. dumeril by Le Sueur (1818) was 
based on three specimens. Although Le Sueur (1818) 
did not specifically state where these specimens were 
collected, the syntype accessioned in the Museum Na¬ 
tional D’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN-IC-A-9692), by Le 
Sueur himself, lists New York as the locality of collec¬ 
tion. Le Sueur (1818) wrote “My observations on this 
species are derived from three individuals, perfectly 
alike; and the drawing was made from one which Mr. 
Titian Peale kindly put into my hands for examina¬ 
tion, before preparing it for the museum.” Peale, who 
was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, took his first 
collecting trip abroad during the 1817 ANSP Florida 
Expedition, which lasted from 25 December 1817 un¬ 
til late April 1818 (Porter, 1983, 1985; Bennett, 2002); 
however, Le Sueur’s description of S. dumeril, which 
included the specimen provided by Peale, was read 
to the ANSP on 3 March 1818 (Le Sueur, 1818). Be¬ 
cause Peale did not return from his collecting trip in 
Florida until over a month after S. dumeril had been 
described by Le Sueur, and because Peale’s detailed 
logs do not mention the collection of any sharks; the 
specimen in question was therefore not collected as 
part of the ANSP Florida Expedition. Further, no an¬ 
gel sharks were collected during 12,451 trawls con¬ 
ducted south of 32.93°N off the EC, an area extending 
from the central coast of South Carolina to the Flori¬ 
da Keys. Additionally, no angel sharks were reported 
within observer data collected during 942 commercial 
trawls for penaeid and rock shrimp that were con¬ 
ducted from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (35.20°N) 
to Port St. Lucie, Florida (~27.0°N) from 2007 to 2010 
(Scott-Denton et al., 2012). However, 2 records of an¬ 
gel sharks having been captured and tagged by recre¬ 
ational fishermen in shallow water off the east coast 
of Florida are present within the NMFS Cooperative 
Shark Tagging Program database (Kohler 5 ). One shark 
was tagged off Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, on 17 June 
1973 and the other near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 
3 October 1979. Both sharks were caught off the EC at 
latitudes lower than those at which any angel sharks 
have been reported before or since. Further, because 
there is no way to verify identifications of these speci¬ 
mens (i.e., photographs) and because angel sharks are 
morphologically similar (e.g., dorsoventrally depressed, 
5 Kohler, N. 2018. Personal commun. Northeast Fish. Sci. 
Cent., Natl. Mar. Fish. Serv., NOAA, 28 Tarzwell Dr., Nar- 
ragansett, RI 02882. 
two relatively large dorsal fins) to the lesser electric 
ray (Narcine bancroftii), which commonly occurs off 
the east coast of Florida (McEachran and de Carvalho, 
2002), we suspect these records are anomalies or the 
result of misidentification. 
The northern extent of the distribution of Atlan¬ 
tic angel sharks was recently reported by Ebert et al. 
(2013) to extend into New England waters (i.e., Con¬ 
necticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hamp¬ 
shire, and Maine). However, the northernmost docu¬ 
mented occurrence of the Atlantic angel shark off the 
EC that we are aware of is off Massachusetts (e.g., 
Smith, 1922), which is the northern distribution extent 
of Atlantic angel sharks acknowledged by Castro (1983) 
and Compagno (2002). Additionally, no angel sharks 
were collected during 15,074 NEFSC trawls conducted 
north of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts (~41.5°N). 
Furthermore, among all survey data examined for our 
study, no Atlantic angel sharks were collected north 
of southern New Jersey (39.30°N) and only 2.6% of 
all angel sharks collected during fishery-independent 
surveys off the EC were found south of Cape Lookout, 
North Carolina (34.58°N). Therefore, we conclude that 
the primary range of Atlantic angel sharks off the EC 
of the US extends from southern New Jersey to Cape 
Lookout, North Carolina. 
The distribution of angel sharks off the EC appears 
to be temperature driven because this variable had the 
highest level of significance in the logistic models. Off 
the EC, the Labrador Current brings relatively cool 
water southward from northern latitudes, terminat¬ 
ing near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina at ~35.2°N 
(Fratantoni and Pickart, 2007). North of Cape Hat¬ 
teras, angel sharks are present year-round; however, 
south of this area in the waters of southern North Car¬ 
olina and northern South Carolina, the species occurs 
offshore in relatively deep waters during winter. From 
December through March, the mean bottom tempera¬ 
ture of inshore waters from Cape Hatteras to Charles¬ 
ton, South Carolina, is less than 13°C (Grieve et al., 
2016), below the minimum preferred temperature for 
angel sharks (13.5°C). By February, mean bottom tem¬ 
peratures of these coastal waters are less than 12°C 
south of Cape Lookout, North Carolina (Atkinson et 
al., 1983). Although water temperatures in offshore wa¬ 
ters along much of the continental shelf in the region 
are within the preferred temperature range of angel 
sharks during the winter, the influx of warm waters 
from the Florida Current during this time results in 
bottom temperatures above the preferred temperature 
(19.5°C) of angel sharks south of central Florida (Fig. 
6; Atkinson et al., 1983; Grieve et al., 2016). Therefore, 
we hypothesize that a thermal barrier prevents angel 
sharks inhabiting waters off the EC from moving into 
the GOM. 
Temperature also limits the movement of angel 
sharks from the GOM into waters within the Straits 
of Florida and northward along the EC. The preferred 
water temperature of angel sharks in the GOM was 
found to be 15.7-19.4°C. However, mean annual tern- 
