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04/17/2021 - Boat - North Carolina - No Injury

Recent Shark Attack in 2021 Information on Shark Attacks in 2021 Latest Shark Attacks all here at Shark Attack Survivors
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alb
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Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2010 7:41 pm

04/17/2021 - Boat - North Carolina - No Injury

Post by alb »

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.” 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.”


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