Sharks

Here, we will highlight the central findings from this study – as we collect, process, and analyze information. At this point, however, because our study is still in the beginning stages, we don’t have any major results to report.

We have of course learned a few things simply by having caught and tagged some sharks in Resurrection Bay: we know these sharks regularly do come into Resurrection Bay, otherwise, we would not have been able to catch sharks here repeatedly. We know we can catch them in the summertime, but we don’t know how long they remain in this area, whether and how far they might move away, and if so when they come back. A few of the sharks we caught in Resurrection Bay have been detected by acoustic or satellite tags in other areas, such as Prince William Sound or Shelikof Straight.

One of the sharks we caught threw up a few only superficially digested the whole salmon when it was brought to the surface. This suggests they do eat salmon when in the area.

We do know that there are predators that prey on these sharks, right here in Resurrection Bay. We will fill you in on this story in a future blog post and with additional details right here, once we have worked up the data from the predation event we learned about.

Even though every shark we caught and released was tagged with at least a numbered spaghetti tag to allow positive identification, we never caught a shark more than once. Given that our catch effort to date has been comparatively low, with only 8-10 hooks in the water for short daytime soaks, yet having caught on average about a shark every other day, we think there may actually be quite a few sharks in the area, at least during the summer. This is of course in no way a quantitative assessment, but simply an informal, anecdotal observation at this point.