When a shark tagged off the Eastern Shore as part of a marine-life tracking project took off on an unprecedented monthlong journey, researchers quite literally watched its every move. Thanks to cutting-edge satellite tags, scientists at the Guy Harvey Research Institute plotted and analyzed the Mid-Atlantic odyssey of I-NSU, a juvenile shortfin mako shark that a GHRI team caught in May off the coast of Ocean City.
The Shark track Link: http://www.nova.edu/ocean/ghri/tracking/?project=WAtlanticmakosharks
Since being tagged, I-NSU has traveled at least 8,000 miles, more than 1,000 of them in a shockingly straight path over the course of about 30 days, researchers said. From late January to mid-February, the shark traveled almost exactly due south in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, astounding scientists and helping upend conventional notions of the species’ migratory patterns.
“What was remarkable to us was this animal’s very directed movement, like it was going somewhere it wanted to get,” said Dr. Mahmood Shivji, director of the GHRI, based at the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “It was not messing around.”
New tools, new beliefs
Before the advent of satellite-based tracking technology, scientists relied on simple ID tags to determine sharks’ patterns of movement. When anglers recaptured tagged sharks and reported the locations of their catches, researchers compiled the data points in an attempt to decipher the animals’ general migratory paths.
“So you catch a shark, put an ID tag on it, hope that somebody is going to catch it somewhere and report back to you because you put your information on the tag to say, ‘Let us know where you caught it,'” Shivji said. “But, as you can imagine, when you put an ID tag on it and somebody recaptures it, all you have is a straight line connecting the two points.”
As a result, scientists long believed shortfin makos — typically tagged off the Mid-Atlantic coast — spent late spring and summer off the East Coast, Shivji said. As winter neared and waters cooled, scientists thought the sharks traveled toward the warmer Caribbean.
Now, however, smart position or temperature, otherwise known as SPOT, tags can send signals to orbiting satellites within range whenever a tagged shark surfaces, giving a clearer picture of its movements, Shivji said.
And, much to GHRI researchers’ surprise, I-NSU and six other shortfin makos tagged off the East Coast have been doing anything but adhering to traditionally observed migratory behavior.
“You can see that these animals are not just going up and down the U.S. East Coast,” Shivji said. “They’re going very far out east, into the open ocean.”
The GHRI tracking website, which provides satellite data for 13 shortfin makos tagged in the west Atlantic, displays a matrix of clustered dots that have charted the sharks’ paths for months.
Makos tagged in the Mid-Atlantic have swum farther north than scientists expected, Shivji said. One shark, GHOF4, traveled farther north than any shark in recorded history, reaching waters off the northern tip of Newfoundland.
Continue reading this article at this LINK…..
—–
Join ODU Magazine on Facebook here at this LINK…..
Join ODU Magazine on our Twitter fishing site here at this LINK…..
Join ODU Magazine on our Twitter hunting site here at this LINK…..
.