Observation of the critically endangered soupfin shark (Galeorhinus galeus) in the Changing Salish Sea Frontiers in Marine Science

High trophic-order predators play a critical role in ecosystems, exerting top-down control on prey species populations through direct predation (Terborgh et al., 1999; Pinnegar et al., 2000; Feit et al., 2019) and modify the behavior and habitat utilization of lower trophic level species through their presence in these systems (Ripple and Beschta, 2004; Heithaus et al., 2007). Therefore, shifts in the abundance and distribution of top predator species within an ecosystem can have cascading effects on lower trophic levels, changing trophic dynamics and ecosystem function (Heithaus et al., 2008; Baum and Worm, 2009; Newsome and Ripple, 2015). Thus, identifying shifts in the spatiotemporal habitat utilization of predators can be critical to the management of ecologically and economically valuable systems.