A MARINE biologist has praised pupils of an Aberdaron primary school after they found one of her shark tags, worth over £3,000, during a recent beach-clean.
Jackie Hall, based on the Isle of Man, has been running the Manx Basking Shark Watch project for the last 10 years, which involves tagging the fish to learn more about the species.
On 15 July, 2009, the research group put an archival MK10 PAT tag on a seven-metre-long female basking shark who was nicknamed Ami.
During a recent beach clean-up, organised by Keep Wales Tidy, pupils from Ysgol Crud y Werin found the tag on Aberdaron beach. Teacher Catrin Roberts said: “The children didn’t know what it was at first, but after the Keep Wales Tidy team made some enquiries, we discovered it had come off a basking shark. “They were completely blown away by the find.”
Once Mrs Hall had been notified that the children had found the tag, she sent them a £50 reward and is now hoping she will be able to download the entire information of where the shark travelled and to what depths as the tag is still in good condition.
She said: “Excellent and surprising things happen sometimes. In this case the urgent need to clean up all plastic rubbish from our beaches has met with another urgent conservation need, to find out more about our endangered basking sharks.
