The Pacific smalltail shark (Carcharhinus cerdale), sister species of the Smalltail shark from last week, is an example for a misguided believe in authorities, in this case the experts Henry Bryant Bigelow and William Charles Schroeder. What happened? After this species was first described in 1898 by Charles Henry Gilbert, colleague Seth Eugene Meek and his assistant Samuel Frederick Hildebrand discovered between 1910 and 1912 several specimen on a fish market in Colón on the Caribbean side of Panama and reasoned that this species lived on both side of the Isthmus of Panama. Maybe they made an error in identification, or wrongly assumed the fish was also caught there, we will never know. Since the Panama Canal had not opened yet, neither the sharks nor the fishing vessel was able to reach the Atlantic side of Panama from the Pacific side afloat, but a fish transporter ashore sure did. Anyway, in 1948 Bigelow and Schroeder not only repeated the mistake of their colleagues, but insinuated that Meek and Hildebrand considered therefore the Pacific smalltail shark not as an own species but as synonymous with the closely related, on the Atlantic side native Smalltail shark. Only in 2011 this mistake was remedied by José I. Castro, but such important websites like the IUCN or the Florida Museum still don’t feature that fact and need an urgent update (edit: the IUCN did it now).
Just like its sister species,the Pacific smalltail shark is a requiem shark and viviparous. It inhabits coastal waters of the eastern Pacific from the Gulf of California to Peru.
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