On 19 April 2014, a female goblin shark, Mitsukurina owstoni, was captured in a commercial shrimp trawl in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The shark, estimated to be approximately 5 m in length, was captured at a depth of approximately 490 m and released alive shortly after capture. This specimen represents the second goblin shark ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.

The first documented occurrence of a basking shark, Cetorhinus maximus, in the Gulf of Mexico was reported off Sarasota, Florida in 1969 and was considered peculiar as the species is considered to be limited to cold water habitats. Recently, four separate sightings of individual basking sharks within the northern Gulf of Mexico have occurred indicating the species, while not common, might not be as rare in the region as once considered. All four sightings occurred in shallow coastal waters off northern Florida during March of 2010, 2011. Analyses of satellite imagery indicated that the presence of basking sharks in north-eastern Gulf of Mexico waters coincided with an intrusion of oceanic Loop Current waters into coastal waters.

The bigeye thresher, Alopias supercilious,is commonly caught as bycatch in pelagic longline fisheries targetingswordfish. Little information is yet available on the biology ofthis species, however. As part of an ongoing study, observers sentaboard fishing vessels have been collecting set of information thatincludes samples of vertebrae, with the aim of investigating ageand growth of A. supercilious. A total of 117 specimenswere sampled between September 2008 and October 2009 in the tropicalnortheastern Atlantic, with specimens ranging from 101 to 242 cmfork length (FL) (176 to 407 cm total length). The A. supercilious vertebraewere generally difficult to read, mainly because they were poorlycalcified, which is typical of Lamniformes sharks. Preliminary trialswere carried out to determine the most efficient band enhancementtechnique for this species, in which crystal violet section stainingwas found to be the best methodology. Estimated ages in this sampleranged from 2 to 22 years for females and 1 to 17 years for males.A version of the von Bertalanffy growth model (VBGF) re-parameterisedto estimate L0, and a modified VBGF using a fixed L0 were fittedto the data. The Akaike information criterion (AIC) was used tocompare these models. The VBGF produced the best results, with thefollowing parameters: Linf = 293 cm FL, k = 0.06 y–1 and L0 = 111 cmFL for females Linf = 206 cm FL, k = 0.18 y–1 and L0 = 93 cm FLfor males. The estimated growth coefficients confirm that A. supercilious isa slow-growing species, highlighting its vulnerability to fishingpressure. It is therefore urgent to carry out more biological researchto inform fishery managers more adequately and address conservationissues.

A proximal fragment of a gill raker identified as belonging to a shark of the genus Cetorhinus was collected from middle Eocene deposits of the La Meseta Formation in the northern part of Seymour Island, Antarctica. This is the first record of a fossil basking shark from Antarctica and one of the earliest records of the genus. The minimum age of Cetorhinidae is middle Eocene. The only living species of the family Cetorhinidae is a very large plankton feeder, Cetorhinus maximus. Basking sharks are unknown in subantarctic or Antarctic waters but occur on both South American coasts today. The evolution of filter-feeding vertebrates is discussed.