Mystery Shark solved! As part of our daily activities at the St. Lucie Power Plant Intake Canal, IRG biologists regularly remove and release marine megafauna; most commonly sea turtles, Goliath Groupers and Nurse Sharks. On August 22nd, we captured a 7ft long, 132 lb female Nurse Shark with a large yellow tag in her dorsal fin bearing the numbers 108. Since there was no return information on the tag all we knew was that someone, somewhere had previously caught this girl before. After we released her back into the Atlantic alive and well it was time for some mystery solving. After most of a days worth of detective work, and lots of email inquires later, we made a pretty amazing discovery. This shark was originally tagged on August 7th, 2008, by the Cape Eleuthera Institute in the Bahamas! That is just over 6 years of free swimming. Even more amazing is that it may represent the first documentation of this typically sedentary species crossing the gulf stream. What an amazing discovery and definitely no small feat for the shark either!
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 11:00:00 +0000
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