FEATURE SAVING SHARKS
By: Ocean RamseyThe Great Whites of Isla Guadalupe
To lock eyes with a great white shark,
watching it gracefully yet powerfully
swim in from my periphery directly
towards me, is an experience that no
words can describe. Every year, I work
with the white sharks that aggregate to
feed on seals and sea lions around Isla
Guadalupe, Mexico, under One Ocean
Research, a group of marine biologists
based in Hawaii. We set receivers and
tags to gather data on the movements
of white sharks in the area.
If a tagged shark swims within a
kilometre of an underwater receiver,
it will record the number code of
the shark’s tag. Before deploying a
tag, the shark is photographed on
its left and right side and filmed for
ease of comparison between males
and females, adults and juveniles.
Whenever possible, we also work with
charter boats that take tourists tosee the white sharks and utilise their
images to look for the occurrence of
some of these tagged sharks outside of
the receiver area.
I work with Dr. Hoyos, who has
dedicated his life and professional
career to studying the white sharks of
Isla Guadalupe in Mexico. Dr. Hoyos
has been working and tagging sharks
in Isla Guadalupe for over 15 years.
Sometimes, Dr. Hoyos and I will do
24-hour tracking of certain sharks to
record their movements in real time
with our GPS and a VR100 device that
shows their current depth and the
external temperature being recorded
by their tag.
The role of sharks in the oceans’
ecosystems is to pick off the dead,
dying, weak, sick, or injured in order to
keep lower trophic level populations
healthy and in balance. With over 400