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Tag: marine life

  • Great White Shark Tracked For The First Time Crossing The Atlantic Ocean

    A mature female great white shark nicknamed Lydia was tagged off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida in March of last year. Since then, the researchers have been keeping a close eye on her. This weekend, almost a year later, researchers saw that she was on her way across the Atlantic Ocean. It was a milestone, since there had been no records documenting such a feat by a great white. Lydia’s current position is east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and she seems to be headed towards the coast of the Cornwall peninsula in the U.K.

    The discovery that great white sharks can make long-distance trips has started to change the way science regards the species. For instance, it could be a factor when looking at the ways to conserve the shark population. According to Bob Hueter of the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, if sharks are to be saved, scientists and advocates must not only protect the animals where they live, but “also work with other countries towards global conservation.”

    Lydia now holds the distinction of traveling the farthest distance of any known great white shark. She has covered around 20,000 miles, including her trips along the East Coast of the United States. In 2004, another female great white was discovered to have swam from South Africa to Western Australia and back. Her journey back and forth across the Indian Ocean was tallied at 12,427 miles.

    Advances in technology have enabled scientists to track large predators such as Lydia. The group that developed the method used to secure and tag her, Ocearch.org, shows a real-time track of the great white on its website. Lydia’s tag, attached to her dorsal fin, is tracked by satellite. When she swims, her dorsal fin rises above the water’s surface, and the tag transmits location data.

    Before Lydia’s tag was developed, scientists made use of archival tags that stored information until these were retrieved. Researchers then downloaded the data to recreate where the shark had been.

    Watch “Lydia”, the great white shark, get ready for the Atlantic Ocean

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • New Study: Marine Life Rapidly Migrating to Poles

    New Study: Marine Life Rapidly Migrating to Poles

    A new study published in the journal of Nature and Climate Change may generate some controversial discussion: the rising ocean temperatures are pushing marine creatures 7 km (just over 3 mi) a year in the direction of the cooler water.

    The scientists who participated in the research are from 17 different institutions located in the United States, Canada, the UK, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Australia, and South Africa. ABC Australia quotes the team’s leader, Dr. Elvira Poloczanska, expressing her surprise at the rapidity of the migration.

    “We knew that changes were happening, but we didn’t expect them to be so pervasive… We didn’t expect to pick up changes in every single ocean and we certainly didn’t expect the changes to be as rapid as we’re seeing,” she said.

    The Guardian shared words with Dr. Christopher Brown, a post-doctoral research fellow from the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute and a participant in the study: “One of the unique things about this study is that we’ve looked at everything… We covered every link in the food chain and we found there were changes in marine life that were consistent with climate change across all the world’s oceans and across all those different links in the food chain.”

    The noteworthy changes in the study are hardly limited to the locations where marine species live, but also how they live. The study shows that breeding and seasonal migrations are taking place as soon as 4 days earlier than typically expected. In spite of the fact that the Earth’s resilient oceans are acting as a powerful heat sink, readers should be reminded that these kinds of changes are much more intense than any such changes recorded for land-based counterparts.

    Warmer waters shorten the marine winter, which brings about earlier spring and all the various seasonal changes that accompany it. Species that can’t travel, like shellfish and barnacles which depend on coastlines, will be threatened by the rising temperatures. Dr. Brown: “If they’re already at the edge of the range there’s nowhere for them to go. You could potentially lose those [species].”

    The study authors concluded that 19 percent of their observations conflicted with the climate change hypothesis. Dr. Brown notes that fisheries may need to move their ports to keep up with their money-earning fish, but even if humans actually reduced their emissions right now, the oceans would need at least another couple decades to heal its scars.