Report | July, 2018
Tagged Sharks Overlaid with Commercial Fishing
To celebrate Shark Week and increase awareness about the threats facing sharks, Oceana worked with shark experts Dr. Austin Gallagher, Chief Scientist and CEO of Beneath the Waves; Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, Research Associate Professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (UM); and additional collaborators to launch a new interactive map that displays the movements of 45 tagged sharks in relation to commercial fishing activity. The sharks were tagged between 2012 and 2018 at various locations around the United States, and tagged species include blue, tiger, shortfin mako, great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, porbeagle and dusky sharks. The shark tracks were added to the Global Fishing Watch platform to highlight the overlap between sharks and commercial fishing. Click the map to view in Global Fishing Watch.
The map shows that the sharks travel far and wide, and some stand out:
- The 45 sharks traveled throughout the northwest Atlantic Ocean, covering over 150,000 miles total.
- A 7-foot-8-inch adult male shortfin mako shark named “Oscar” traveled more than 22,000 miles in less than two years.
- An 8-foot-4-inch adult male blue shark named “Buzz” traveled the furthest south of all the tagged sharks—over 3,000 miles from Cape Cod, past the Caribbean to South America!
- Read the press release.
- View a short video of the shark map.
- Learn more about sharks.
- Shark photos and video available upon request. Please contact Megan Jordan.
