74 
Fishery Bulletin 11 7(1-2) 
Figure 2 
Photographs of the resting and ovulating stages of maturity in 
the porbeagle (Larnna nasus). (A) Ovary from a 248-cm-FL resting 
female caught in late September 2016 at the Grand Banks of New¬ 
foundland, Canada. (B) Ripe ovary from a 249-cm-FL ovulating 
female caught in November 1999 at Saint Pierre Island, Canada. 
For reference, 10-mm scale bars are included. 
that had few small follicles (Fig. 2A), compared with 
a ripe ovary with many large oocytes (Fig. 2B). Four¬ 
teen females that were in the resting stage and caught 
on Stellwagen Bank were examined between July and 
September (Fig. 1). In addition, 2 sharks in the resting 
stage were caught east and south of Cape Cod, Nan¬ 
tucket, and Martha’s Vineyard in July, and 2 sharks 
in the resting stage were taken on the Grand Banks 
of Newfoundland in September (Fig. 1). Three mature 
and 2 immature male porbeagles also were caught in 
the Gulf of Maine-Stellwagen Bank area during sam¬ 
pling for this study but will not be discussed. 
Data from Jensen et al. (2002) for 20 adult females 
were reexamined by using the staging criteria from our 
study (Table 1). For 3 of these females, enough data 
were not available. Of the remaining 17 reexamined 
porbeagles, 2 females were postpartum, 1 fish was 
ready to ovulate, 9 individuals were ovulating, and 
5 females were resting (Table 3). The 5 porbeagles 
in a resting stage were caught in July on Cultivator 
Shoals, located on Georges Bank (n=l); in October on 
the Grand Banks of Newfoundland (n= 1); and in April 
on the Scotian Shelf east of La Have Bank (n=3). This 
result indicates segregation of females in different ma¬ 
turity stages by time and location when compared with 
data from Jensen et al. (2002), who caught gravid and 
ovulating females primarily east of longitude 62°W, 
particularly in the area of the Grand Banks of New- 
