SHY GUYS
Naturalist Georgina Jones delves into the world of shysharks and reveals a fish whose name tells us a great deal about its lifestyle and habitat.
O
CCASIONALLY, BEACH WALKERS find small smooth brown or striped pouches cast up on the sand. They’re rectangular and have tightly curled tendrils at their edges. They’re usually empty and may have a small hole in them or, in some cases, be entirely open at one end. These are mermaid’s purses and they’re the capsules in which baby shysharks begin their lives. Shysharks, or catsharks, are so named because of their habit, when threatened, of curling up into a defensive circle with 42 |
SEA RESCUE AUTUMN 2022
their tails over their faces. The idea is possibly to make it more difficult for a predator to swallow them. Certainly, to human observers, it makes them seem rather more cute than anything else. The catshark family is a large one, including more than 150 species, and members are found in almost every ocean habitat, though many are found only in deep water. At least 17 species live in Southern African waters and luckily for local divers, most of those are inshore shallow water species. The average size
