OCEARCH’s latest expedition to has resulted in the discovery of a white shark hotspot off Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
The 21-day expedition by OCEARCH and its joint team of U.S. and Canadian scientists resulted in the collection of nearly 300 biological samples samples. Six great white sharks were also affixed with satellite tags which are already transmitting valuable scientific data to the OCEARCH Tracker database system.
OCEARCH director Chris Fischer called the team’s first Canadian research mission –and 33rd overall — a success after their observations indicated “a hotspot for this keystone species.” Previous data suggested the Nova Scotia area could be a potential mating site for the North Atlantic white shark population.
“I think with what we found here, this is the beginning of a whole new chapter, a whole new horizon, a whole new universe of science at a scale and in an area that we didn’t know about and vastly underestimated,” Fischer said.
The team sampled five males and two female white sharks, Among them was Luna, a 15-foot long shark named after the people of Lunenburg, the second biggest white shark OCEARCH has tagged in the North Atlantic, after Mary Lee. The Nova Scotia expedition brought OCEARCH’s total number of white sharks SPOT-tagged in the north Atlantic to 39.
“We went up there with the hypothesis that maybe the animals were mating, but we did not see evidence of mating,” said Dr. Robert Hueter, Chief Scientist on the Nova Scotia Expedition and Director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory.
“We found mature males and females, but we also found sub-adult males and females. Is this an actual mating site, just a feeding site for this time of year, or a refuge of some kind? We don’t know yet. We hope our sampling and tagging efforts will help us find clearer answers.”
OCEARCH hopes to return to Nova Scotia on future expeditions to gather data and learn more about the high level of shark activity in the area. Two of the tagged sharks, Nova, a 1,186-pound great white with a length nearing 12 feet, and Cabot, a nearly 10-foot great white named after the explorer John Cabot, have already “pinged in” nearly 1,000 miles away off the coast of North Carolina.
The team credited the success of the expedition to the collaborative nature of the undertaking. The vessel, M/V OCEARCH, hosted 11 researchers, from 9 institutions during the trip. The roughly 300 samples gathered will support 15 studies by 26 scientists from 19 different research institutions.
To follow Luna, Nova, Cabot, and other OCEARCH-tagged animals’ latest location, click here to see the Ocearch Global Shark Tracker.