A mako shark took a group of marine researchers off guard, when it made a U-turn after being released and came back to bite their boat multiple times.
It happened about 30 miles off North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and video shows the shark spent about 30 seconds chewing along the hull.
The shark eventually gave up without doing any real damage, according to James Sulikowski of the Sulikowski Shark and Fish Conservation Lab at Arizona State University. The incident happened April 17, on the team’s first day out, he said.
“It was pretty awesome,” Sulikowski told McClatchy News. “We were excited to see it being released in great condition, then to see it turn around in typical mako fashion and bite the boat was spectacular. It was making a statement: ‘You caught me, now I’m going to catch you so we’re even’.”
Mako don’t have tempers and aren’t known for being aggressive toward humans, so Sulikowski assumes the bites were a defensive warning “to make sure we knew it had teeth and to leave it alone.”
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The mako was juvenile, about 4-feet in length and counted among 19 mako sharks caught and tagged during the expedition. The largest of the sharks was 8 feet, and the group was evenly divided between males and females, said Sulikowski, who was among the principle investigators for the project.
All 19 were bycatch — fish caught unintentionally in commercial pelagic longline fishing gear that intended to catch swordfish, tuna and mauhi, he said.
Sets of longline fishing gear can stretch as long as 28 miles, NOAA Fisheries reports, and there is growing concern mako may be dying in large numbers due to being unintentionally tangled in the lines.
Two grad students led the research — Brooke Anderson of Arizona State and Mischa Schultz of the University of Missouri — and their plan was to partner with a fishing boat to see how many mako got caught in fishing lines and if they survived.
The expedition spent four days aboard the Sarah Brent, a commercial fishing vessel piloted by Capt. Gordy Elliot, out of Wanchese.
Grant funding for the study came from the NOAA Bycatch Reducation Program, and the Outer Banks were targeted because the region has a thriving fishing industry and lots of makos. Sulikowski’s collaborator on the grant proposal was Mike Byrne from the University of Missouri.
All 19 of the makos were fitted with tags that will record data on their movements over a 28-day period, then “pop off,” Sulikowski said. It appears all 19 are still alive and were able to handle the stress of being caught in the commercial longlines for extended periods, he said.
“We did not observe any post release mortality. All indications now are that makos have a high survival rate,” he said.
“Makos are a very hot topic and high priority species now, because the population is on the decline. There … is a petition to see if makos should be listed as a threatened or endangered species in U.S. waters,” Sulikowski said. “Our work is helping understand and mitigate interactions with pelagic longline fishing gear.”
Source: https://www.newsobserver.com/
