Tagging 3000 Sharks - AU Study

Outstanding news from Australia this week as one of the largest of its kind shark tagging projects gets the green light to go ahead:

Scientists from James Cook University will carry out the three-year project, the largest of its kind carried out in 20 years, to determine how to balance shark fishing with supporting stocks in northern waters.

JCU fisheries researcher Andrew Tobin said the project was a necessary step for the long-term sustainability of both the sharks and the fishery.

"Sharks are harvested because shark fillet, often sold as flake, is an important and valuable product within the domestic seafood trade," Dr Tobin said.

Complete Story.

White Sharks Vacation Desination? Mexico!

It would seem that vacation planning to Mexico is not just limited to Canadians, Europeans and Americans...white sharks love the sun too. Image hat tip DBtechno

Recently released white shark pup from the Monterey Bay Aquarium has made it all the way down the coast to Baja in record time, just six weeks. A similar track was made by a previously released white shark-with the tracking tag coming off the animals side prior to entering the Sea of Cortez.

(03-22) Chronicle -- One of California's best wildlife stories of the year, tracking the coastal adventures of a young great white shark, took a stunning twist in the past week.

The shark was released in February from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and in six weeks has already swum past the southern tip of Baja at Cabo San Lucas and is heading south to the Mexican mainland. That is a distance of roughly 1,200 miles covered in 44 days, according to electronic reports, an average of nearly 27 miles per day - and that's if the shark is swimming in a straight line, an unlikely event. That is the fastest a shark has been documented migrating south from Monterey to Baja, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

This past winter, more than 650,000 people saw the young great white shark during its 162-day stay at the aquarium.

Another twist is that the public can track the shark's position online, where its movements are updated and mapped. Check it out at: las.pfeg.noaa.gov/TOPP_recent/index.html.

Saga of Goldilox: A great white shark tagged by scientists and named "Goldilox" has swum 5,441 miles and is now roaming off, yep, San Francisco, likely looking for something to take a bite out of. They get hungry, you know. Check it out at topp.or

TOPP's White Sharks

You gotta hand it to the TOPP's people (Tagging of Pacific Predators). They recently announced new findings from over 100 high tech sat tags placed on white sharks all over the Pacific in 2006. This last year was one of the most ambitious tagging projects on record:

"Every winter the sharks leave California's coast for one of two destinations. A minority of sharks head to the Hawaiian Island chain. The majority, however, congregate in a part of the open ocean halfway from California and Hawaii, 1,300 miles from land. Researchers have yet to uncover what attracts the shark to this particular spot. During these journey the sharks will occasionally dive up to a quarter-mile beneath the surface and stay at this depth, where light barely penetrates, for hours. On returning to California, the sharks display remarkable site-fidelity, always heading to the same area of coast they left before. “These animals appear again and again at very specific areas,” Salvador Jorgensen says, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station and the Monterey Bay Aquarium".

Isla Guadalupe island located in Mexico plays into this ongoing migration drama every year with animals returning every season after visiting the same sites as their California cousins. Making the Pacific a very small body of water after all.

Hard Science: Ano Nuevo

Nicole Teutschel is with the TOPP's team at Ano Nuevo Island just a few short miles down the coast from the Bay Area in Northern California.

The site of an abundant Elephant Seal colony, she and her team have been tagging these simply huge pinnipeds with long range sat tags in the hopes of learning more about these amazing critters.

Oh, and Ano Nuevo is also home to more Great White sharks per square inch than almost any other site on the planet as well.

If you have some time to rip through some cool tracking data today have a look at the latest in Hard Science.

We're pretty sure these 2000lb seals just don't roll over to get sat tags placed on them: