![]() “We could apply it to studying hermit crabs as much as to great white sharks. What other senses do great white sharks use while hunting 5. Can great white sharks detect blood from miles away 4. He added that the undersea drone technology could help broader studies of marine ecology, sustainable fishing and ocean conservation. What is the hunting range of a great white shark 3. “They’re arguably the most charismatic, if not the most well-known species on the planet,” Skomal said, “and it’s still one we know remarkably little about some of its most basic natural history.” Decades of research, tagging and diving have done little to answer basic questions about the fish, including what social lives they might have and where they might reproduce.Īround Guadalupe, presumed to be a white shark haven because of the large number of seals that gather there, the drone did not observe any interaction between the sharks. “Not only do we get to see what they are doing, but we also know exactly where they are and collect data about the physical environmental in which they live.”Īlthough the drone has opened a window into daily life under the sea, white sharks remain mysterious. ![]() The AUV also captured sharks swimming close to the bottom when they were in shallower waters, which Skomal said may be “an effort to snatch prey or spook it up from below, or associated with navigation”.Īmy Kukulya, one of the researchers and an engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the “groundbreaking” AUV is so far the first way scientists will be able to study white sharks and other animals in the open ocean. At other times the sharks simply approached the drone to look at it, before moving on along their way. Some sharks did not bite but rather bumped the drone, nudging the vehicle with their snout in what the researchers call an “agonistic” behavior – an aggressive or even defensive thump, but not anything like a committed attack. Great White Sharks are Apex Predators, which means they have no natural predators in the ocean and can roam freely without the threat of being attacked. ![]() Most surprising to the researchers, Skomal said, was that “the hunter would become the hunted – the AUV was viewed by the shark as potential prey and aggressively attacked”. “The remarkable new observations indicate that hypothesis is correct, and the sharks ambush from the darkness.” “If the shark hangs down at a great depth, in the darkness, then its prey swims above it silhouetted and the shark reduces its own likelihood of detection,” Skomal said. Skomal said that the behavior captured by the drone cameras supports the idea that white sharks dive down as far as 200 meters in order to use light to their advantage. He said automated unmanned vehicles (AUVs) like his team’s let humans observe marine life in comprehensive detail, rather than what scientists can see in the fleeting shark breaches, or their encounters at the surface or through electronic tracking.įrom the waters off Guadalupe, an island off Mexico where Pacific white sharks congregate, the scientists observed 10 different individuals, including the 20-foot female named Deep Blue and a local shark nicknamed Bubba. ![]()
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