August 11, 2014 — The always cool great white shark is red hot recently. And it doesn't look like the popular predator will “jump the shark” anytime soon.
But well before the most recent spate of attention there was the Discovery Channel's Shark Week, which kicked off its 27th year of shows on all things shark on Sunday, and there were researchers trying to figure out better ways to understand the lives of its stars.
In the waters off Cape Cod now is the time when the action tagging great white sharks heats up, said Gregory Skomal, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries senior marine fisheries biologist and go-to shark guy.
“About 80 percent of our sharks are tagged between late July and the end of August,” Skomal said. “We typically anticipate that that will be our peak period.”
Skomal couldn't say yet whether this year, with two sharks tagged as of Sunday, was unusual.
Charter fishermen are saying everything is two weeks behind and that may be true for the sharks too, he said.
“I think things are going to pop especially if the two week delay is going to hold true,” he said.
Skomal is spending his tagging time this year onboard with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, which was formed in 2013 and has helped support the state's tagging operations off the Cape since then.
The group tagged the first white shark of the year on July 31 and a second one on Friday just north of the Chatham Harbor inlet, said Cynthia Wigren, conservancy executive director and co-founder.
They use acoustic or pop-up satellite tags and sometimes both.
The acoustic tags are picked up by receivers located on buoys in the water while the pop-up tags stay on the shark for 6-9 months before popping off and transmitting information on where the shark has been, depth, water temperature and light, Wigren said.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times