Stephen Paine

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Levell, Samantha

Area of Concentration

Marine Biology

Abstract

This thesis is testing to see how having specific feeding times modifies bonnethead sharks’ activity levels. Bonnethead sharks are the smallest kind of hammerhead shark species. We got permission to record and work with the three female bonnethead sharks at Mote Marine Aquarium. The hypothesis is that bonnethead sharks at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium will increase their velocity in anticipation of being fed if they are consistently fed at specific times, and their velocity will be stable at a lesser speed at all other times. Data were collected for a total of seven days using a camera. At Mote, the bonnetheads were fed 2 times a day, except on day one, they were fed once. Day one was excluded from data analysis to ensure consistency within the data. Once the data were collected, it was processed with Excel and R Studio. Afterwards, it was compared to the data from the study by Myrberg & Gruber (1974) and Cortes et al. (1996). The hypothesis was not supported by the data because the data was not conclusive, but an observable trend was seen. When the results were compared to the data from the studies by Myrberg & Gruber (1974) and Cortes et al. (1996), it showed that the bonnetheads' activity varied between the studies. Most of the bonnetheads did not become active till the afternoon, except in this thesis, they became active around the morning feeding periods. This difference in behavior supports the hypothesis that the feeding time periods caused the bonnetheads to become more active when they naturally are not

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