Diagnosis

A rather slender, well-proportioned carcharhinid with the interdorsal ridge either absent or indistinct; snout rather long and narrowly rounded;  rise from snout to 1st dorsal fin somewhat acute in appearance; no conspicuous markings on the fins. Nostrils not particularly developed; eyes circular and rather small, their diameter 1.1 - 2.2.% TL.  Upper-jaw teeth narrow, posteriorly-curved and serrated with  coarser serrations on the crown feet and no cusplets; tooth count usually 15/15 or 16/15 in each symphysis.  First dorsal fin moderately large, with a narrowly rounded apex; origin over or just behind the pectoral fin free tips. Pectoral fin apexes rather pointed in appearance. Second dorsal fin small, height only 1.9 - 2.6% TL; upper lobe of caudal fin bulges somewhat just above the anterior origin when viewed laterally. Colour bronzy to mid golden-brown or grey dorsally, fading to white ventrally; a band of darker pigment invades the belly-flanks and terminates at the pelvic fin origins. No obvious fin-markings but typically all apexes are somewhat dusky, especially in juveniles.

Size

To 292 cm; Mediterranean examples have ranged from ca. 60 cm to 276cm; size at birth 59 to 67 cm.

Status and Distribution

Mediterranean Sea: Rare or occasional; Southern Spain, Morocco (Chafarinas) and Algeria to Southern Sicily;  Tyrrhenian Sea; Dodecanese archipelago  and probably as a  sporadic vagrant elsewhere in the Eastern Basin; old specimens from Nice and the Golfo di Trieste, Adriatic.  I.K. Fergusson collected a section of embedded upper-jaw teeth from commercial fishermen at Rhodes, 09.90, removed from a ca. 60 cm shark taken in a bottom-net off Faliraki, ca. 500m offshore, during August 1990. Inspection of the teeth revealed them to be from C. brachyurus, thus extending the known range of this species in the Mediterranean eastwards to at least the Dodecanese Islands. See  Cigala Fulgosi (1983) for an earlier summary of Mediterranean records. Cigala Fulgosi (pers. comm. to IKF). reports a further 6 contemporary specimens from Mazara del Vallo (Sicily), ranging from 185 to 276 cm TL, all but one males.  Moreno and Hoyos (1983) reported a further female specimen (234.8cm TL) from Chafarinas under the synonym C. acarenatus. Recently, Vacchi et al (1995) described a 260 cm TL gravid female taken in a "Tonnarella" set in 8 m at Punta delle Chianacce, near Baratti (Tuscany) in June 1980, giving a further range extension northwards in Italian waters. Upper-jaw dentition sent to IK Fergusson from Malta in 1994 infers sporadic captures there. Clearly this species is cosmopolitan, but prone to misidentification by commercial fishermen in regions where other carcharinids are frequently captured (e.g., Sicilian Channel).

Biology

Essentially coastal, both close inshore and offshore from the surface down to 100m or more; possibly migratory in the region with northward excursions during the summer months.  They will frequent rather turbid and gin-clear waters, often in the vicinity of bays and gulfs or near islands and over a variety of bottom substrates. Copper sharks are active predators of a variety of bony fish, including mackerel, sardines, mullets, flatfish and jacks; also smaller sharks and rays, cuttlefish and squid. In South African waters, large aggregations of these sharks follow longshore migrations of sardines off Natal. This species is more regularly encountered on the Atlantic side of Gibraltar, from the southern Iberian Peninsula south to Cape Verde; the interrelationship between Mediterranean and Atlantic specimens is unknown but probably manifests a single populace. The predominance of males within Sicilian Channel records suggest some degree of (perhaps seasonal) sexual segregation within the Mediterranean; the region may be a reproductive zone for these sharks given the capture of a gravid female off Italy and a neonatal specimen from the Dodecanese, but captures are reported too sporadically for any clear trend to be established. Viviparous. Litter size is from 13 to 20 pups; Italian example carried 14 embryos, each 40 - 50 cm long and weighing 1.1.kg (Vacchi et al., 1995). Females mature at under 240cm; males between 200 - 229cm (Compagno, 1984).