A short-fin mako shark with satellite tracking tag affixed to its dorsal. (Photo by George Schellenger – Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation)
Politics isn’t the place for pinfish, especially this election season in Florida, where there is blood in the water and the predators are circling. Sometimes you have to leave the polling to the sharks.
Which is why Nova Southeastern University and the Guy Harvey Research Institute have brought back a team of satellite-tagged short-fin mako sharks to help predict winners in a two of Florida’s 2018 mid-term elections.
Using satellite data collected from tags researchers will determine which shark in each race logged the most miles between Oct. 16 and Nov. 3. The shark that travels the furthest will then be used to predict who will be taking up residence in the Florida Governor’s mansion and who will make their way to the U.S. Senate.
DeSantishark, named for Congressman Ron DeSantis, will be racing Gillum, named for Mayor Andrew Gillum, will be racing to determine the gubernatorial race. Nelson Shark, representing incumbent Senator Bill Nelson, and Scott Shark, representing Governor Rick Scott, will go fin-to-fin to predict the senate race.
“Once again we turn to our sharks for their wisdom and expertise,” Dean of NSU’s Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography Richard Dodge, Ph.D. said. “The sharks did a pretty good job two years ago, so let’s see how they do this year.”
The prognisticating predators previously picked politicians in Shark Race to the White House in 2016. It was one of the only polls to correctly predict that Donald Trump —despite his hatred of sharks — would become the next President of the United States.
Follow the tagged sharks in near real-time online via NSU’s Shark Race to the U.S. Senate and Florida Governor’s Mansion website at www.ghritracking.org/flrace. Don’t forget to pick your favorites via social media networks using the hashtag #makoprediction
A Perilous Path to the Polls
Just like politics, there are plenty of potential pratfalls that can derail a campaign.
There’s no way to guarantee that the tagged sharks will log a significant number of miles. While they were caught, tagged and released in the same general vicinity, sharks, like humans, tend to follow their own path. They could venture out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, while another may prefer to frequent a smaller, more familiar area.
“Some sharks we’ve tagged have tallied many miles, venturing way out into international waters while others have hugged the coastline,” said Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., the Director of NSU’s GHRI and a professor in NSU’s Halmos College. “Over the years we learned many things about the paths mako sharks take, but each shark has its own surprises, and that’s what lets us know there is so much more to learn about their behavior.”
Something else that can impact this project – the sharks have no special protection just because they’ve been tagged by NSU researchers. Like all mako sharks, they are subject to the perils of their natural habitat.
“We’ve lost upwards of 30% of the sharks we’ve tagged since we started,” Shivji said. “It illustrates just what these animals face in the wild. In fact, our tracking studies have demonstrated that mako sharks in the western North Atlantic are being over-fished.
The project is a way for researchers to highlight the work they are doing in order to better understand — and ultimately protect — the apex predators.
“For me, it’s the science that is most important” Dodge said. “This is a fun way to focus attention on the research NSU scientists are doing and the plight of sharks in our oceans. The work we’re doing at NSU’s Guy Harvey Research Institute and Save Our Seas Shark Research Center is critical if we are to help protect these animals.”