Fig 1.
Map of sampling locations for sharks on the eastern coast of the Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia) and the western coast of Borneo Island (East Malaysia).
All study sites face to the SSCS in Malaysia territorial waters (blue shades) covering the four states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Johor in West Malaysia and the two states, Sabah and Sarawak, in East Malaysia. Base map is downloaded from the USGS National Map Viewer (open access) at http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/.
Table 1.
Sharks landed in the southern South China Sea and their depth preference, habitat and distribution [24, 43–44, 46–59] and IUCN status [22].
Table 2.
Number of sharks and species composition landed in the southern South China Sea.
Fig 2.
Shark diversity landed in six states in the southern South China Sea.
Table 3.
Sharks landed on the eastern coast of the Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia) and the western coast of Borneo Island (East Malaysia) and their overlapping species.
Fig 3.
Seasonal occurrence and diversity of sharks landed in Terengganu State in the southern South China Sea.
Eleven species were found in monthly observations for approximately four years from 2014 to 2017. Three species, the brownbanded bamboo shark Chiloscyllium punctatum, the spot-tail shark Carcharhinus sorrah and the Indonesian bamboo shark Chiloscyllium hasseltii, were the dominant species constituting 90% of sharks of a total of 11 shark species in the Terengganu State.
Fig 4.
Monthly size distributions of three dominant species, the brownbanded bamboo shark Chiloscyllium punctatum, the Indonesian bamboo shark Chiloscyllium hasseltii and the spot-tail shark Carcharhinus sorrah, landed in Terengganu State in the southern South China Sea.
Monthly size distributions were recorded for approximately four years from 2014 to 2017.
Fig 5.
Size distributions of sharks landed in the southern South China Sea.
Twelve shark species with more than 20 specimens landed at various growth stages from newborn juveniles and/or to mature adults22-26. LB (black arrow), LMM (green arrow) and LMF (red arrow) indicate the length at birth, length at maturation of male and length at maturation of female, respectively.
Fig 6.
Size distributions of sharks landed in the southern South China Sea.
Sixteen shark species with less than 5 specimens were landed at various growth stages from the newborn juveniles and/or to mature adults22-26. LB (black arrow), LMM (green arrow) and LMF (red arrow) indicate the length at birth, length at maturation of male and length at maturation of female, respectively.
Fig 7.
Sharks landed in the southern South China Sea.
Piked spurdog Squalus altipinnis at various growth stages from the newborn to mature adults were landed (a). Sharks with fins cut off at landing ports in southern South China Sea (b). Shark finning practice at landing ports in southern South China Sea (c).
Table 4.
Total lengthand body weight of sharks in this study and total length at birth, hatch and maturity of sharks [22–26].