Despite the ecological significance of elasmobranchs as top-level predators in most marine ecosystems (Cortés, 1999), information on their energetics and metabolism is meager. Metabolism is an important component of an organism’s daily energy budget and may account for its greatest, yet most variable proportion (Lowe, 2001). It was hypothesized that sharks had lower metabolic rates than comparable teleosts because most of the original work on the metabolic rate of sharks focused on relatively inactive,© 2004 by CRC Press LLC