WOODS HOLE, Mass. — July 31, 2013 — Twenty great white sharks or 31 days — one of those benchmarks will cap the OCEARCH expedition to tag great white sharks off the coast of Chatham.
The crew and scientists who left for sea Tuesday hope it's the former.
Loaded with an array of scientific gear and a state permit, and flying a flag from the world-famous Explorers Club, the 126-foot modified Alaskan crab boat set sail from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Iselin Dock under crisp blue skies. The adventure is being billed as the largest great white shark expedition in the country's history.
"We're going to learn about how this animal lives from day to day," said Greg Skomal, a state scientist and leader of Massachusetts' shark research project, who set sail with the OCEARCH on Tuesday. The vessel is named after the nonprofit ocean-based research organization that spearheaded the trip and got the funding.
"We have remarkable technology, some of which is brand new, that we're going to put onto these sharks," Skomal said. "We're going to get fine-scale movements; we're going to get broad-scale movements. We're going to learn about what it does every second that it's swimming away from this vessel over the course of several days."
For Skomal, the trip is also providing a much-needed boost to his research into the great white sharks that have been showing up with increasing frequency in Cape waters. Now in his fifth year tagging Cape Cod's great whites, he's been struggling to find ways to fund trips with his local partners, Cape Cod Shark Hunters. The OCEARCH trip is being underwritten by a number of corporate partners, the largest of which is Caterpillar Inc.
If they find great whites, Skomal and the OCEARCH crew will have plenty of work to do over the next month.