University of Washington Ocean Ecologist Camrin Braun and his colleagues tagged sharks to track them as they dove warm water eddies to the ocean twilight zone to forage. (Photo by Tane Sinclair-Taylor, James Cook University)
HYANNIS – A new research study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that blue sharks use large ocean currents, known as eddies, to fast track their way down to feed in the ocean twilight zone.
The ocean twilight zone is a layer 200 to 1000 meters below the surface, and it contains the largest fish biomass on the planet.
The Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington also took part of the research alongside WHOI, and the findings were published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Over a dozen sharks were tagged off the Northeast Coast and were monitored for nine months. The tags relayed information via satellite.
The sharks spent, on average, around an hour foraging for food like fish and squid. They would then head back to the surface to get warm, before repeating the process again.
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