The smooth dogfish is a small, abundant coastal shark inhabiting western Atlantic waters off the U.S. northeast coast.  It is seasonally abundant south of Cape Cod in the summer in depths of less than 20 m (Castro 1983).  This species primarily feeds on or near the bottom on crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters and shrimp, using a combination of ram and suction to engulf prey (Wilga et al., 2007) and it is primarily a nocturnal predator (Casterlin and Reynolds 1979, Bigelow and Schroeder 1948).  This species has been shown to require both olfactory and lateral line information to locate sources of dead food, with vision playing only a minor role (Gardiner and Atema, 2007).  I am now looking at the involvement of electroreception in the detection and capture of live prey.  I will be examining the striking preferences of intact animals as they are presented with spatially separate sources of olfactory, mechanical and electrical stimuli, as well as the effect of sensory lesions on the kinematics of the capture of live prey.