Scalloped Hammerhead, Sphyrna lewini (Griffith & Smith 1834)

Other Names: Hammerhead Shark, Hammer-head Shark, Kidney-headed Shark, Scalloped Hammerhead Shark

A Scalloped Hammerhead, Sphyrna lewini. Source: Clay Bryce / Shorefishes of the tropical eastern Pacific online information system. www.stri.org/sftep. License: CC by Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Summary:

A distinctive hammerhead shark with the scalloped front of margin of the head curved forward with an indentation in the middle. Scalloped hammerheads have the pelvic fins with an almost straight hind margin, and a moderately tall, curved first dorsal fin. They are olive green, bronze to brownish-grey above, paler below, with dusky pectoral fins dusky tips and smooth-edged or weakly serrate teeth.

The Hammerhead: Electric Vision Shark

A very large school of Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks off Mozambique.

A Scalloped Hammerhead filmed at a depth of 1042 m in the Ruvuma Basin off Tanzania, Western Indian Ocean.

Scalloped Hammerheads at Daedalus Reef in the Red Sea - depth 40-55 m.

ARKive footage of Scalloped Hammerheads.

Cite this page as:

Bray, D.J. 2023, Sphyrna lewini in Fishes of Australia, accessed 27 Apr 2024, https://fishesofaustralia.net.au/home/species/1968

Scalloped Hammerhead, Sphyrna lewini (Griffith & Smith 1834)

More Info

Distribution	Known in Australian waters from about Geographe Bay, Western Australia, around the tropical north, to Sydney, New South Wales. Elsewhere, widespread in tropical and warm temperate seas.
Biology	Females have large litters, producing on average 17 pups per litter, with multiple paternity being common in this species. This may be due to the fact that females can store sperm for up to a year. Chin et al. (2017) found that Scalloped Hammerhead populations are segregated by sex and size, with Australian populations dominated by juveniles and small adult males, while Indonesian and Papua New Guinea populations included large adult females.
Conservation	IUCN Red List : Endangered CITES Listed: Appendix II
Remarks	A Scalloped Hammerhead was filmed by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) swimming near the seafloor at a depth of 1042 m in the Ruvuma Basin off Tanzania, Western Indian Ocean.
Species Citation	Zygaena lewini Griffith & Smith, 1834, The Animal Kingdom 10: 640, pl. 50. Type locality: southern Australia (as "south coast of New Holland").
Author	Bray, D.J. 2023
Resources	Atlas of Living Australia Australian Faunal Directory Catalog of Fishes

Scalloped Hammerhead, Sphyrna lewini (Griffith & Smith 1834)

References

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