I started diving in the shallow head of Monterey Submarine Canyon during the fall of 1988 for my masters degree thesis project on the effects of natural disturbances and sunken drift algae on soft sediment macrofaunal communities. Soon after I began diving in this habitat, I began and encountering prickly sharks, which normally inhabited greater depths. To my knowledge, no one had observed prickly sharks first hand prior to my observations. Some years earlier, another student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories had captured some prickly sharks in the canyon head with hook and line Moss Landing whaling pier, which has since been removed. He studied their physiology and examined their gut contents. After my observations, some colleagues at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Nicole Crane and John Heine, did some surveys and published a couple of papers their observations of the prickly sharks in the head of Monterey Submarine Canyon. I also helped colleagues from the Monterey Bay Aquarium capture a prickly shark from the head of Monterey submarine canyon . That specimen was in the large tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium until it was released due to problems it was having regulating its buoyancy. Much later, Dawson and Starr (2009) published the results of further studies.
References
Crane, N.L. and Heine, J.N., 1992. Subtidal observations of the prickly shark, Echinorhinus cookei. in the Monterey submarine canyon, California.
Dawson, C.L. and Starr, R.M., 2009. Movements of subadult prickly sharks Echinorhinus cookei in the Monterey Canyon. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 386, pp.253-262.
