Great White Shark Tracking Follows the Fish
Great White Shark Tracking Follows the Fish
You know who likes to cruise the coast in the summer? Great white sharks, of course. Right now off the coast of Cape Cod, a diverse team of scientists is attempting to tag and track the most white sharks ever during a single expedition. But the sharks are proving to be shy and cautious about taking the bait.
Led by the marine nonprofit Ocearch and using its vessel, a modified Alaskan crab fishing boat, the expedition has the capacity to tag and study up to 20 white sharks during its month in the Atlantic. Aboard are Ocearch founding chairman Chris Fischer, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries senior scientist Greg Skomal, experts from the Mote Marine Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and a diverse team of academic researchers from multiple colleges and universities.
Tagging and studying the sharks will help the scientists learn more about great white shark biology, Skomal told me this week. And that could mean providing beach managers with better information to keep both the sharks and the public safe.
The team has different kinds of electronic tags ready to use, Skomal explained. One is a pop-up satellite tag that can archive data such as depth and light levels. The tag can be programmed to release from the shark and then float on the water surface to transmit data back to the scientists.
Another is a real-time satellite tag, which connects to a satellite whenever the shark comes to the surface, providing data about the shark’s movements so scientists — and the public — can follow a shark’s migration patterns over a long time. The tags this team uses should last about four years.
In the future an underwater robot could even track tagged great white sharks. Skomal, a Shark Week veteran (video), has been working on an autonomous underwater shark tracking robot that can compete with the robots that West Coast shark trackers Chris Lowe and Chris Clark are developing. “For science purposes it’s great to know everything you possibly can about all the animals on Earth. White sharks are no exception,” Skomal said.
Back on the Ocearch vessel, the team will have a short 15 minutes with each great white brought aboard to attach tracking tech, do scans, take a small sample and then release it back into the ocean. So far the group has seen about 10 sharks, Skomal said, but they have yet to successfully lure one to their smaller vessel, catch it safely and transfer it to the main boat via hydraulic lift.
“They’re very shy animals here,” Skomal said, but he remains optimistic they’ll tag one soon. ”They’re showing some interest.” The expedition runs through Aug. 29.
Photo: A great white shark spotted in the Atlantic during a shark tagging expedition off Cape Cod this month. Credit: Paul Taggart, Ocearch.(Aug 9, 2013 01:01 PM ET // by Alyssa Danigelis)
