JACKSONVILLE, Fla — More than a dozen shark species can be found off Jacksonville’s coast and recently Action News got an up close look at some of them.
Reporter Kristy Wolski and photographer Joel Lotz joined the University of North Florida’s Shark Biology team, lead by professor Dr. James Gelsleichter, on one of several weekly trips to tag sharks.
That day's team consisted of graduate student Melissa Gonzalez De Acevedo and undergraduate students Alexander Arango-Esterhay, Colleen Wiltberger and Lauren Stetler.
The group left from Mayport and rode about a mile off the coast of Mayport. That’s where the shark search began.
The students baited several lines and they were spread out a short boat ride from each other. After about an hour of waiting, the lines were pulled up one-by-one.
The first line captured a 6 ½-foot female spinner shark. The animal was measured and weighed and all of the information recorded on a data sheet. The students then attached a government issued tag with a phone number so the shark can be tracked if it’s ever caught again.
That’s only part of their research. UNF’s Shark Biology program is also studying pregnancy in sharks, so many of the females are checked for pregnancy.
“I am ultra-sounding this female to identify whether she’s pregnant,” Dr. Gelsleichter explained, while performing an ultrasound on the shark. “We’ve drawn blood from her. Our hopes are to develop an indicator of pregnancy in sharks, so we need to get blood from pregnant females as well as non-pregnant females.”
After the ultrasound, the shark was released.
In just a couple hours, the students pulled up ten sharks of varying species, including blacktip and blacknose. They are all tagged, measured and blood drawn, before being released back to the ocean.
Gonzalez De Acevedo said she is often asked whether working with sharks is scary.
“Honestly they’re just like any wonderful exotic animal,” she said. “If you know how to handle them well and you handle them cautiously, it’s exhilarating, not scary.”
However, swimmers should still beware their surroundings, especially this time of year.
“Particularly during the summer there are a sizable number of sharks off our coast and in many cases we’re talking about relatively large animals within one to two miles off of the beaches,” Dr. Gelsleichter said. “Animals that could be somewhere in the 6-9 foot range.”
UNF first began surveying shark populations off Northeast Florida in 2009. Gelsleichter said they have tagged sandbar, blacktip, spinner, Atlantic sharpnose, bonnethead, scalloped hammerhead, smooth hammerhead, tiger, smooth dogfish, blacknose, finetooth, bull, nurse and lemon sharks.
Our coast also has the occasional visit from great white sharks. Mary Lee, a 3,600 pound shark, was tracked by OCEARCH in the Jacksonville Beach surf in 2013.
Overall, though, the chance of getting attacked is slim. Gelsleichter said shark bites are actually not that common in our area.
“It’s a small number in comparison to the number of people we have on the beach and certainly the number of sharks we have out on the water,” he said.
The UNF Shark Biology program is also doing research up the Atlantic Ocean to the Carolinas, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Bahamas.
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