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Tiger Shark Trackings Reveal New Insights into Migration

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:07PM   
from the i-think-we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat dept.

Runaway1956 writes in with a story from Fox News:

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!

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Original Submission

• USS Indianapolis (1945)USS Indianapolis (1945) (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @11:52PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @11:52PM (#198830)

  When I think of Tiger Sharks, I think of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35). [wikipedia.org]
  That was the cruiser that delivered the core of the Hiroshima bomb to Tinian.

  After the ship was torpedoed and sunk, 880 men entered the water.
  It was 3 days before a plane spotted the survivors.

  The Discovery Channel stated [...] that the Indianapolis sinking resulted in the most shark attacks on humans in history, and attributes the attacks to the oceanic whitetip shark species. Tiger sharks might have also killed some sailors.

  The same show attributed most of the deaths on Indianapolis to exposure, salt poisoning, and thirst, with the dead being dragged off by sharks.

  [...]321 men came out of the water alive

  The sinking wasn't near any significant land mass. [wikimedia.org]

  -- gewg_

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• Re:USS Indianapolis (1945)Re:USS Indianapolis (1945) (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 21 2015, @12:32AM

  by Runaway1956 (2926) on Sunday June 21 2015, @12:32AM (#198849) Journal

  I've read that story a number of times. The Navy puts a good deal of effort into teaching water survival, but they never taught us any way to defend against shark attack.

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  We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.

  Parent

  • Re:USS Indianapolis (1945)(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @04:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @04:53AM (#198947)

    > but they never taught us any way to defend against shark attack.

    Well, they are soo damn rare that it probably isn't worth the effort.

    But...
    Punch them in the gills, or nose as the last resort Most shark attacks on humans are preceded by an 'exploration' to determine if you might be edible. When they come in for the taste test, hit them where it hurts.

    Parent