The Outer Banks provide feast for great white sharks
Warm current pushing predators north this year
CAPE HATTERAS, N.C. — Nova was swimming near Frisco, Sydney was feeding off Rodanthe and Ferg was hanging around Corolla.
And then there was Helena, Caper, Jefferson, Shaw and Oscar.
At least eight great white sharks — some as many as 12 feet long and weighing more than 1,000 pounds — were feasting on fish this week off Outer Banks shores. And more were expected to make their way up from Florida soon.
“We’re seeing all our white sharks stacking up,” said Chris Fischer, founder of Ocearch, a research organization that tags great white sharks and collects samples.
He believes these apex predators have always come here in large numbers, but no one has been able to record it as it happens.
“This is the first time we’ve had this many sharks tagged,” Fischer said. “We are able to see things we couldn’t see before.”
Ocearch now has 20 tagged great white sharks compared to a handful in previous years.
The Gulf Stream is pushing warmer water farther north than normal this time of year. Great white sharks, the “lion” of the ocean, are following the warm water.
Hatteras is about where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador Current flowing from the north. Warm water species and cool water species mingle on this edge of ocean habitats.
If food were scarce, the sharks would leave, Fischer said.
“There is a lot of life in those temperature breaks,” Fischer said. “This is actually a tremendously good sign. It means the ocean system is doing very well there.”
Sharks can eat cooler water fish such as tuna or munch a mahi from warmer waters without swimming far, he said.
A 126-foot-long ship named M/V Ocearch carries researchers for tagging and information gathering expeditions. Sharks are caught with baited hooks and are guided by hand underwater to a submerged platform. The platform is raised above the surface where hoses provide a continuous flow of fresh seawater over the gills. The process, called handlining, creates less stress on the animal.
In just 15 minutes, a team takes 12 samples — including blood, tissue, body measurements and parasites. They then tag the shark with a device that pings off a satellite when it surfaces.
Each tagged shark represents many more sharks, Fischer said.
Some people are critical of Ocearch’s methods of bringing sharks out of the water, but Fischer touts the amount of data collected and the popularity of its public program.
The tagged sharks contribute to 18 research projects overseen by 30 scientists from 20 institutions, he said. Thousands of people have followed the sharks as they surface and show up on the Ocearch website. Stories of nearby great white sharks generate heavy traffic on various websites. Sharks have their own Twitter accounts, some with thousands of followers.
Great white sharks are the largest predatory fish on earth. They have excellent senses of sight, smell, taste and can detect movement in the water at great distances.
They grow to an average of 15 feet, but can exceed 20 feet. Shaped like torpedoes, they can swim at speeds up to 35 mph. They chomp on prey with a jaw filled with 300 serrated teeth.
The big sharks are by far the most likely to bite humans with 326 unprovoked attacks listed on the International Shark Attack File operated by researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History. That’s more than double the number of tiger sharks, the second most dangerous species. Still, the risk of dying by shark attack are one in 3.7 million, according to the file.