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A number of sharks are taken by fishing gear as a by catch off the Yorkshire coast and are invariably brought back to the fish market, where they always attract interest.

Only one shark species occurring locally has formed the subject of a specific, targeted fishery by Yorkshire commercial boats, although Porbeagle sharks have, in the past, been targeted along this coastline by Danish fishermen, setting sub-surface long lines.

There is very little biological information relating to most previous catches of shark occurring off the Yorkshire coast, because until recently, the unnecessary tradition of selling sharks in a whole and un-gutted condition has usually precluded anything other than a cursory examination.  Over the years a small amount of information has been gleaned from local catches of Basking shark and, very rarely, of the porbeagle.

In recent years, however, more thorough examination has been made of three species through the help and permission of a number of fishing skippers and fish salesmen; porbeagle sharks and a thresher have been dissected either before or after sale, and their stomach contents, gut parasites, and reproductive organs have been examined. Extraction of vertebrae, which are used for ageing studies of sharks, is however, not possible for examinations carried out when the fish are still in the middle of the marketing and transport process.

A rare opportunity to examine a small example of the basking shark, now protected from exploitation, was obtained when the skipper of a Scarborough trawler, Shaun Crowe, kindly brought back for examination a specimen found to be dead on hauling the net, instead of merely dumping the dead fish back onto the fishing grounds without any information being obtained from it.

SHARKS RECORDED FROM THE YORKSHIRE COAST AND CENTRAL NORTH SEA

A large number of shark species inhabit the deep water both on and off the continental shelf to the west and north of the British Isles, including the deep northern north sea, beyond the 200 metre depth contour. The greater North Sea area to the south of this becomes increasingly shallow, thus effectively restricting their distribution further south. Twelve species of shark may be regarded as having been recorded from the survey area of the central North sea, but only two of these deep water demersal species, the large Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus and the curious bramble shark, Echinorhinus brucus, have, with any frequency, penetrated further south into this shallow area.

The Greenland shark was caught on a number of occasions in Victorian times and in the early 20th century, but has been extremely rare since then. There have been three remarkable captures of small juvenile fish only during the present survey, one of which had been feeding on a cetacean corpse immediately before capture.

Twelve species of shark have been recorded from the Yorkshire coast, including four epipelagic, open water species and seven demersal species while another, the wide ranging and cosmopolitan spurdog, is the only species to have been targeted specifically by Yorkshire fishermen.

Isuridae

Lamna nasus (Bonnaterre, 1788) Porbeagle Shark

Cetorhinidae

Cetorhinus maximus (Gunnerus, 1765) Basking Shark

Alopiidae

Alopias vulpinus (Bonnaterre, 1788) Thresher or Fox Shark

Scyliorhinidae

Scyliorhinus canicula (Linnnaeus, 1758) Lesser spotted dogfish, locally Nurse

Scyliorhinus stellaris (Linnaeus, 1758) Nursehound, Greater spotted Dogfish

Carcharinidae

Prionace glauca (Linnaeus, 1758) Blue Shark

Triakidae

Mustelus asterias Cloquet, 1821 Starry Smooth Hound

Galeorhinus galeus (Linnaeus, 1758)  Tope

Squalidae

Squalus acanthias Linnaeus, 1758  Spiny or Spur dogfish

Echinorhinus bruchus (Bonnaterre, 1788) Spinous or Bramble Shark

Somniosus microcephalus (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) Greenland Shark

Squatinidae

Squatina squatina (Linnaeus, 1758) Fiddle fish, Monk fish

A NOTE ON THE SPECIES OF MUSTELUS IN THE NORTH SEA

Two species of the common small ground sharks known as smooth hounds are known from european waters, Mustelus asterias, the starry smoothhound, and Mustelus mustelus, the plain smoothhound, and both species are frequently stated in reference works to occur throughout the North Sea.

M. asterias frequently has a scattering of white specks over the body, but it is extremely variable in this respect, and therefore this marking must not be relied upon to be a specific character; off the Yorkshire coast, many fish are totally devoid of this white speckling and therefore resemble M. mustelus.

Positive identification must be made by examination of the dermal denticles, which in M. asterias are ridged almost to the tips, while those of M. mustelus are ridged only at their bases, with smooth tips.

All specimens of Mustelus examined during the survey, whatever their external markings, have proved to be Mustelus asterias, and M mustelus is therefore not regarded as being present in the central North sea.

CHANGES IN THE STATUS OF SOME CENTRAL NORTH SEA SHARKS

There have been changes in the status and distribution of several of the species formerly recorded from this sea area. As noted above, the Greenland shark, Somniosus, is now extremely rare and has been so for several decades. The bramble shark, Echinorhinus, a sluggish demersal species from deep water of the continental shelf, was occasionally caught in the North Sea during the 19^th century, but has not been recorded since the last example was caught, rolled up in Whitby fishermen’s lines, in the 1890’s.

Two ground sharks, the angel shark, Squatina, formerly known to Yorkshire fishermen as the fiddle fish, and the greater-spotted dogfish or bull-huss, Scyliorhinus stellaris, are now extinct in the area; Squatina has not been seen since the late 1950’s, and the bull huss was last seen in the early 1970’s.

The thresher, Alopias vulpinus, was also frequently reported in the 19^th century, particularly around the Whitby area, where it was regularly reported by fishermen to be chasing salmon and trout off the harbour; individuals were caught into the early 20^th century, since when records have ceased until recently. A young, recently born pup was reported from a salmon net in Bridlington Bay, and released, while a female  caught in Filey bay in 2007, was  believed, on dissection, to have liberated young just a short time before capture.

THE MOST RECENT EXAMINATION; A FEMALE PORBEAGLE SHARK FROM WHITBY, CAUGHT BY RICHARD BREWER, NOV. 2009.

A large female porbeagle was landed by Richard Brewer on the Whitby fish market on November 13^th 2009 and was bought by Alliance fish . The shark was brought through to their premises at Scarborough, where the fish was dissected before final transport to their customer; we are grateful to Mr Bob Scarborough for permission to dissect the shark, and to his staff for assistance.

The shark was one of the largest seen on the local markets, and also one of the most interesting. It had eaten a number of fish, but we were surprised to find its most recent meal had been of a large salmon, full of roe, that was only partially digested.

This shark was a gravid female, with huge ovary and swollen uteri, each of which contained numerous unfertilised eggs in capsules, among which were two tiny pups.

D. E. Whittaker

The Chinese mitten crab, Eriocheir sinensis, is a medium sized crab, unmistakeable when found; its colour is a light greenish-grey to brown, with a box-like carapace which in large specimens may reach over 70mm in width. The front of the carapace between the eyes, bears a concave central notch; the sides of the carapace have four, not very prominent, teeth. The legs are long, with an extreme span nearly five times the carapace width, and with dense setae along the distal half of their length.

The chelipeds are the most notable feature of this crab, being clothed in a dense fur of long setae, this feature having given the crustacean its name of mitten crab.

This crab is a native of China, and is typically a fresh-water species that migrates to saline waters in order to breed, the larvae developing in the sea.

The species first appeared in Europe in 1912 when it was found in Germany, but was not found in Britain until a specimen found in the Thames at Chelsea in 1935 became the first to be recorded here; only since the 1970’s has the crab made a slow but steady advance elsewhere in the country.

First recorded in the Humber in 1976, it has now ascended many of its tributaries, and is now found through South Yorkshire; in 2008 a specimen gained publicity by being taken from the River Don almost in the centre of Doncaster. Further north its presence was first confirmed in the River Tyne in 2001, and to the west, the first Irish record was confirmed in January 2006.

An unconfirmed report was received in 2008 that a specimen had been taken by a fisherman in Bridlington Bay, but in early 2009 a living crab was collected from Bridlington Bay, with a number of other marine specimens, during our survey of Brama brama along the coast. This is the first known occurrence of the crab from the sea area off the Yorkshire coast; the specimen is now preserved in the crustacean collection at Scarborough.

D. E. Whittaker

From about 1880, the successful application of steam power to beam trawling began to oust the sailing trawler, and a boom in new-builds of both wooden and iron steam trawlers began along the entire east coast from Aberdeen to Grimsby. In the wake of this massive build of new trawlers was the fashion by owners and skippers, and sometimes by members of the crew, to have a painting of their boat on the wall at home, and two particular painters, A. Harwood and G. Arnold, became known among the fishermen of the coast, as specialist painters in fishing boat portraits. Arnold is perhaps less known, and many of his paintings have an unfinished appearance, and frequently the background of the sky is left unpainted. Harwood, 1851-1922, became a more prolific painter of such watercolour paintings, which are now historically interesting documents of this period of expansion in the fishing industry, and a number of his works are present in our collections.

He started to paint only later in his life, and his earliest paintings from the early 1890’s are basic and elementary, and probably because of this, few of this date have survived the dustbin, yet this is an interesting period in fisheries history, since although the sailing smack was fast disappearing, they were still at work in the fleets. In addition, these were also the transition years from the ancient beam trawl to the otter trawl that fishermen had thumbed their nose at for some decades past, but which would

revolutionise the fishing as steam had already done. All these changes in the morphology of the vessels are documented in the succession of paintings turned out by Harwood for his customers.

His technique quickly developed, and became more polished, though his paintings always remained strictly portrait and with boat and sea often very stylised, the vessels always shown broadside on, but after all, that is exactly what his clientele wanted. The vessels were usually depicted and purchased as a pair of paintings, one illustrating the boat in fine, flat-calm weather, under blue sky, while the second painting showed the vessel in foul weather, with riotous sea, foam and heavy sky.

Through the mid 20^th century, their appeal waned and many were thrown away or sold out of the fishing families, a few at least, entering the export antiques trade and ending up in America, and many of the paired paintings of fair and foul weather rig became separated. Others suffered a different fate, and several old fishermen, interviewed in the 1960’s, recalled that several paintings that had ended up in fishermen’s stores and bait houses had eventually been turned to the wall, had a dart-board chalked on the back, and had been peppered with holes through games of darts. Years later the tales were corroborated when two such mistreated Harwood paintings were subsequently discovered and restored for our collection.

WE ARE ANXIOUS TO PURCHASE TRAWLER AND FISHING BOAT PAINTINGS BY THESE TWO ARTISTS FOR ENTRY INTO OUR HISTORICAL SEQUENCE, SO PLEASE CONTACT DAVE WHITTAKER IF YOU HAVE AN EXAMPLE THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST AND THAT YOU WISH TO SELL.

The crew of the Scarborough trawler Independence, FR 196, had a surprise when emptying their net off Flamborough recently, when they discovered a crawfish among the catch. The North Sea is not within the usual distribution of the crawfish, Palinurus elephas, so it was not surprising that the crew of the trawler had not seen one before.  Skipper Mark Cappleman, realising he’d caught something unusual, put the spiny crustacean in a tub of water and made a few calls ashore to find out more about his catch.

We could tell Mark that this is the first crawfish ever taken by a boat working out of Scarborough, and according to our biodiversity records, it is only the fourth to be found in the Central North sea area, the first being a long way back when a specimen was taken  by a beam trawler in the 1880’s, curiously enough in the same area, off Flamborough Head.

The specimen from Independence is now being kept alive in one of our holding aquaria until a larger tank is prepared.

The crawfish is common off the south-west of the British Isles, and valuable fisheries produce quantities from there and off Ireland. The species extends further north, however, but with increasing scarcity, off the west coast of Scotland and as far as the Shetlands.

The crawfish is regarded as rare off the east coast of Scotland, and is virtually unknown further south, so that any records from the North Sea are of great interest. The current record of the crawfish adds to a growing list of unusual North Sea crustacean records that have accumulated from the Yorkshire area over the past twenty years or so.

D. E. Whittaker

The Harlequin ladybird, a recent introduction to the British fauna, is the most variably coloured and patterned ladybird  to be found in the British Isles. Otherwise known as the Multicoloured Asiatic ladybird, it was introduced into Europe as a biological control agent, spreading rapidly through western Europe, then to the British Isles, where it was first found in southern England in the summer of 2004. By the late summer of 2007 it had reached east Yorkshire and has since been recorded to the north of Scotland.

As a voracious predator in both its adult and larval stages, there are fears that it could have a detrimental effect not just on our native ladybirds, but on other insect species as well. Some scientists have predicted that it will seriously effect probably several hundred of our native British species, and so the insect fauna throughout Britain is being monitored closely to see what effect, if any, the Harlequin ladybird explosion has through the next few years.

The Yorkshire coast now appears to be thoroughly populated by this ladybird. In the path of strong southerly air flows along the country in October 2009, large numbers of the beetle swept through the Yorkshire area. In late October, further warm southerly winds from the Sahara induced the beetles to flight and on one morning near Scarborough, thousands were seen on the wing and alighting on herbage. The swarm penetrated at least to Cleveland. With torrential rain the following week, masses of the beetle were seen among flood refuse in the Tees at Stockton. More observant members of the public had found them in their houses, while one lady at Scarborough was surprised to find 25 sheltering under her dustbin lid.

With such a large population of the beetle now present in the Scarborough district and throughout the area, where many of the recent swarm will doubtless hibernate successfully over the winter, a noticable explosion of Harmonia larvae may be expected along the North East coast in 2010.