Hammerhead sharks are becoming more common along the Gulf Coast as their populations recover from overfishing, according to marine experts.
Dr. Sean Powers, director of the University of South Alabama School of Marine and Environmental Sciences and senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, says hammerhead populations were overfished for a long time but are now recovering.
“They are also a species that will eat stingrays and they love to come up really shallow and chase stingrays like we’ve seen in video recently,” Powers said.
Size and Species
The great hammerhead can grow to about 20 feet and weigh about 1,000 pounds. They have tremendous fins that make them very agile. There are two species of hammerhead in the Gulf: the great hammerhead, which occurs solo, and the scallop hammerhead, which forms social schools.
Feeding Behavior
Hammerheads specialize on bottom-dwelling prey, using their distinctive hammer-shaped head to pin their prey or detect movement on the sea floor.
“They’re going to use that hammer to either pin their bait or just sense things that are moving around on the sea,” Powers said.
Not a Threat to Humans
Because their mouth is positioned on the bottom of their body, hammerheads are not implicated in many shark bites or attacks on humans.
“Hammerheads because that mouth is on the bottom of them. They’re really not implicated in many shark bites or shark attacks. It’s very, very rare,” Powers said.
Hammerheads play an important role in the ecosystem by controlling stingray populations, which helps protect blue crabs, oysters, and other valuable species.