Productive Shark Tagging Season on Cape Cod Winds Down

Dr. Greg Skomal during one of the final research trips of the season in late October.

CHATHAM – The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy is wrapping up its shark tagging program for the 2017 season.

Dr. Greg Skomal, a fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and other researchers made dozens of trips out on the water in the summer and early fall in the fourth year of a five-year white shark population study.

Skomal discussed the season with the CapeCod.com NewsCenter while on the water during one of the last trips at the end of October.

Unlike in 2016, sharks were not spotted in abundance until late summer but Skomal said the season was still productive.

“We really didn’t start seeing larger numbers of sharks until we got into August,” Skomal said. “And then September and October were both strong months with large numbers of sharks.”

Large numbers of sharks were spotted in local waters in June and July last year, according to Skomal.

As water temperatures off the Cape are dropping sharks are begin to move out of the region.

“We certainly expect the number of sharks to be decreasing as we get into this late part of the season,” Skomal said.

A tissue sample was taken from a shark during the outing and Skomal said it will be able to tell researchers about the biology of that individual fish.

Hormone levels will be studied with the University of New England to get a sense of the animal’s maturity.

Genetics will be studied at the University of South Florida to get a sense of where the shark fits into the population and stable isotopes will be studied at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to get a sense of what the animal was eating.

“A small tissue sample like that can tell us quite a bit,” Skomal said.

Shark data continues to grow from the study as researchers placed more than 40 tags on 26 different sharks throughout the season.

“We’ve now hit well over 120 sharks tagged in total, which includes both mature males and mature females as well as juveniles,” Skomal said.

Researchers will now spend the winter combing through data and Skomal believes some preliminary data will be available to the public sometime this spring.

“We’ll have a really good handle on some of the more interesting local movements,” he said.

Skomal also expects 2018 to be just as exciting out on the water.

Research published earlier this fall shows that great whites in the Atlantic are traveling further offshore, more often and at greater depths than previously known.

Some of the sharks which have been tagged have ended up as far east as the Azore Islands off the coast of Portugal and took dives as deep as 3,700 feet.

By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter

Material from the Associated Press was used in this article.

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