A recent article at Wired.com profiles Dr Gregory Skomal, a marine fisheries biologist with the US goverment, and the work he has done tagging great white sharks on the east coast of the United States with Ocearch (they of the satellite tags and Shark Men series). Two of the tagged white sharks in particular have moved extensively up and down the north Atlantic, going all the way to the mid Atlantic ridge (setting off a brief panic in the United Kingdom). The enthusiasm and excitement of the scientists (as opposed to some particularly moronic Britons) as they marvel at the extensive migrations conducted by the sharks in the Atlantic Ocean is quite special.
On the west coast of the US, the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program has been active and obtaining equally interesting results with slightly different methods. There have also been Ocearch-supported tagging studies conducted at the Farallon Islands off California, and at Guadalupe Island, Mexico, with many of the results of those studies published in Global Perspectives on the Biology and Life History of the White Shark a few years back.
I must admit to being wildly puzzled by the timing of this article (December 2013), and the fact that it seems to re-hash a lot of the original Ocearch work. If it’s a public relations exercise, though, it’s a good one, and an interesting read to boot.
Read the article here.
