Posted on 02/14/2010 8:54:46 AM PST by Capt. Tom
February 13, 2010 The second of five satellite tags attached to great white sharks off Chatham last summer has surfaced off Jacksonville, Fla., according to Lisa Capone, a spokeswoman at the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The five tags are programmed to release from the sharks at intervals between five and 10 months after they were attached. Capone said the latest one popped to the surface on Feb. 4, within 30 miles of the first tag, which was located on Jan. 15 about 50 miles east of Jacksonville. The last tag is expected to release in May, she said.
Each tag is worth thousands of dollars. They were attached to the sharks using a harpoon in September.
Greg Skomal, a senior biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries, is conducting the shark study. Tuna fisherman Bill Chaprales of Marstons Mills tagged the sharks using his boat and a harpoon.
The tag records water temperature, depth, sunlight and other data to help scientists trace the movements of a shark over the months since it was tagged. When the instrument surfaces, it begins transmitting data to a satellite and takes three days to upload its information.
Capone said Skomal and his team could release information from both sharks by the end of the month.
DOUG FRASER
You’d only have to exterminate four or five species of sharks, and there’d never be another attack on a human. There would still be 294 or 295 species of the fricking things for “scientists” to study.
Jacksonville?
Glad to see this program. Sharks are awesome creatures.
The 3 species involved in almost every FATAL attack on people are BULLs, TIGERS, and WHITES.
There are now over 450 species of sharks classified.- Tom
I think it’s the Bulls by over 90%. Tigers are not so common and Great Whites (finicky eaters) only bite people by accident.
The Bull shark eats anything and specializes in shallow waters, brackish waters and is the only shark that tolerates fresh water. They live in the tropical and temperate regions around the world and travel hundreds of miles up the world’s great river systems.
When the Vietnam war was going on helicopter gunships used to patrol the beaches and shoot sharks with miniguns. Nobody was ever attacked by a shark while that was going on.
There is a great book on the subject of the New Jersey shark attacks in 1916 it is:"Twelve Days of Terror" by Dr.Richard G. Fernicola.
In it he addresses the "Bull Shark theory, but dismisses it on the evidence and attributes all the attacks to a White shark.
the bull shark theory got introduced because people thought Mattawan Creek was fresh water . It is not- it is a salt water tidal creek.
The attacks did not occur as far up that creek as reports would have you believe.- tom
Why would we want to exterminate whole species of sharks just to eliminate attacks on humans?
Good grief! Why didn’t that make the national news? The bulls are the only ones that can handle fresh water and were almost certainly the ones behind the 1916 terror.
The Great Whites get all the glamor but so much of their lifecycle remains a mystery. I think it is still unknown where they go to spawn. I think one of the great mysteries is the fact that immature Great Whites have never been caught in the Mediterranean.
I am up here in Mass. but I remember the incident.
A guy dove off his dock into a Florida canal and before he made it back to the ladder a bull shark tore a section out of his shoulder and lungs and he eventually died. - Tom
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.