2/3/2024 0 Comments Tracking deep blue sharkThis is the first time acceleration data loggers have been used to study shark post-release mortality. The logger is a small device called an accelerometer that will be attached to the dorsal fin of the shark to record the shark’s tail beat, its depth, and pitch (the angle at which it swims). Though the group will, like most sport fishermen, release the shark after it’s brought in, the animal will leave with a small souvenir: an acceleration data logger. ![]() The shark, thrashing and pulling just seconds earlier, seemingly falls asleep. Whitney rolls the shark on its back, inducing a strange state called tonic immobility. “Fortunately, the days of dragon-slaying are coming to an end.” A Shark Door PrizeĪs the blacktip is brought alongside the boat, the crew scrambles to quickly immobilize it. ![]() “In the days when Jaws came out, the feeling was the only good shark is a dead shark,” and fishermen would take sharks purely for the optics of standing beside its bleeding corpse on the dock to pose for a picture. But that’s not the case: shark populations are decreasing worldwide due to fishing.” Gallagher says that concern for sharks has improved a great deal in the past thirty years or so. “You look at a shark and it’s pretty mean looking, with the teeth hanging out, and you would not think that it has any stress. “Every organism on this planet experiences stress in some way, from a single-celled organism to a student studying for a test.” Stress is viewed as physiological changes in body chemistry, said Gallagher, and can be induced in sharks by changes in salinity, warming waters, and especially when animals are caught and released. University of Miami biologist Austin Gallagher said in a podcast that sharks are as capable of experiencing stress as any other living creature. However, that hasn’t always been the case. “They want the animal to survive, grow up, be caught again.” Both scientists like Whitney and shark fishermen of today want sharks in the water. “Most of the guys who are doing catch-and-release fishing are doing it for the benefit of the animal,” says Whitney. It is five feet of muscle and often provides fishermen with a show as it leaps out of the water when chasing prey. The blacktip is a popular sport fish in Florida. It isn’t long before one of the rods bends and someone hauls in the first catch of the day: a blacktip shark. “We’re trying to figure out what happens to sharks after they’re caught and released alive.” ![]() Nick Whitney of the Anderson Cabot Center for Marine Life. Or will it? “The assumption that a shark swims away and lives a long, happy life after that isn’t necessarily true.” The person calling the assumption into question is Dr. The group is conservation-minded, as are most sport fishermen, so the plan is to release any sharks they catch, often done with full confidence that the animal will be undamaged by the encounter. It’s a blueberry-sky day in Florida, and a small group is fishing for sharks off the coast.
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