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from the i-think-we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat dept.
The fearsome tiger shark is not the shore-hugging beast scientists long believed, according to a new study by Nova Southeastern University's Guy Harvey Research Institute in Florida. The study tracked several of the fish over a two-year period and recorded them crisscrossing oceans and, in one case, logging more than 27,000 miles – this might be the longest track ever recorded for any shark – in both coastal and open waters.
Tiger sharks were thought to be a species that preferred the coast as opposed to the open sea, but these new trackings, which were observed by way of satellite–read tags, revealed that the sharks travel over 4,660 miles, round–trip, each year between the coral reefs of the Caribbean and the open waters of the mid–North Atlantic.
Don't stop with reading the story - visit nova.edu to actually look at the tracking history for tiger sharks and 14 other projects!
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @11:27PM
As a young child, probably about 7 years old, living in hawaii, I was nearly eaten by a tiger shark
It was somebody's birthday, an adult that my parents knew. We took our boat to a secluded bay [goo.gl] for them to have their party. I was out snorkling around on the shallow reef when out of nowhere one of the guys from the boat picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and power-slogged through the water back to the boat.
They had spotted a small(er) tiger shark moseying around on the edge of the reef (you can see how small the reef is in the google maps link). It isn't normal for a tiger shark to come in that near to shore, it usually happens when they are either sick or starving. Either way, you don't want to be near one like that. Since then I've seen plenty of sharks while reef-diving, but none were tiger sharks.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 21 2015, @12:34AM
Personally, I don't think it matters much which kind of shark is stalking you. They are all meat eaters, and if they are big enough to get their jaws around your arm, your leg, or even your torso, they consider you to be fair game.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @01:30AM
We should note here that the largest sharks (Whale shark/Megamouth) are filter feeders; if you're not pinkie-sized, there's no danger from them.
Would one of those guys "stalk" you? Don't know.
(Now, Jonah wasn't swallowed by a whale; the book says "a big fish"--for what it's worth.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @04:49AM
> Personally, I don't think it matters much which kind of shark is stalking you. They are all meat eaters
You watch too much shark week.
There are hundreds of species of shark. Only a handful of them are even going to consider an adult human as prey. Just because a shark's mouth might physically be big enough to bite an arm doesn't mean it is interested in doing so unless extremely stressed, like defending its territory.