Sharks of the Western Indian Ocean-II Triaenodon Obesus (Ruppell)

Abstract

Triaellodoll obesus was first described by Riippell in 1835 (as Carcharias obesus) from specimens up to 3+ ft. in length (1,070 mm.) that he collected at Djetta on the Red Sea. It has since been recorded at a number of localities in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans, those of former including the Seychelles (Playfair, 1867), Madagascar (Sauvage, 1891), India (Day, 1889) and the Chagos Archipelago (Wheeler and Ommanney, 1953), but, curiously enough, it has not been observed until recently in Zanzibar or among the fishes of East Africa (Playfair and Gunther, 1866. Copley, 1952), nor does it range to the south far enough to be included among the fishes of southern Africa (Barnard, 1927, Smith, 1949).