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Fins to Feather

by Scarlet Colley - October - 2003

One of the smallest sharks on earth can be a real pest to other sea creatures including dolphins. This little shark, part of the dogfish family, with the scientific name of Isistius plutodus, is just under twenty inches in length. The males are about four inches smaller than the larger female. They live in the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the world in deeper water and it is thought that they can go up to two miles deep in search of food. This little monster is called a cookie cutter shark and a little monster it is to its prey. The reason for this odd name is its tactics to obtain its food. This shark is almost invisible from the underside, using luminescents, except for a dark spot on its throat. The rest of its long, thin cigar like body disappears, blending in with the light from above. It is very much like putting on an invisible cloak, with just a small shape showing dark. The fish see it as a smaller fish and as the fish attacks, the shark counter attacks and goes in for the meal. Its teeth are set up just perfect to allow it to grab the side of the fish, clamp down, spin around and take a round chunk of meat away with it as it swims off. It does not kill the fish but leaves a nasty cookie cutter shaped hole that will eventually heal.

Twenty or so huge, razor sharp teeth line the lower jaw of its small mouth and the shark will swallow its own teeth when in need of calcium. Its lips also act like a suction cup to help insure its grip while the upper teeth are tiny allowing it to spin around. Using its upper teeth to hold the chunk of flesh, it then scoops out the meal with its lower teeth after making its spin. This little menace can cause our dolphins to have a nasty little hole in their sides and undoubtedly it is painful. We know our dolphins have taken a jaunt off shore to come home with this type of injury, for the Cookie Cutter shark likes deeper water and therefore is no menace in the bay or inshore waters. Sometimes we have off shore visitors that come into the bay area for a few days and you can see that they have more healed bites on them than our inshore dolphins have.

We see Remora’s, which are a fish that latch on with a suction cup to the dolphins, but cause them no harm and are just an aggravation. We have never seen a Cookie cutter shark in the bay but have seen plenty of Remora’s attached to our dolphins. We are not sure if other dolphins in the family group help out the dolphin being attacked by a Cookie cutter shark but we feel that looking at the wound and the way it healed on this dolphin (pictured) that the shark may have been dislodged before it could make its get away with the entire plug of flesh. It looks as if some of the flesh remained and healed over. The size of the holes is about the size of a small biscuit. It also looks like this could be a cookie cutter shark that may have ridden in with this dolphin pictured. It was so long and thin, almost tubular looking compared to the remoras shape that we usually see.

The remoras are so quick that other dolphins attempting to dislodge the pesky fish just end up playing tag with it. We have seen many dolphins leap into the air and belly flop in an attempt to dislodge a remora. The drawings of the Cookie Cutter shark are by Tiffany Patterson who is a talented young artist and has also created the new artwork for the signs at the Convention Center Boardwalk. The photo of the dolphin with the Cookie cutter looking creature attached and the shark bite were taken by us on our dolphin research vessel the Laguna Skimmer. Included is our shot of a dolphin with a remora attatched.

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