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Paper tracks tiger shark migration patterns

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The journal Scientific Reports has published a paper that documents tiger shark’s (Galeocerdo cuvier) movements over na extended period. Individual animals were shown to make annual, repeated journeys of over 7,500 km (4,660 miles) in the northwest Atlantic, from Caribbean coral reefs to “high latitude ocean areas” as far north as Connecticut. Also of note is that the sharks reliably return to overwinter in the same area each year.

The sharks were tracked using satellite tags which, in some cases, produced data for more than three years. One individual, named Harry Lindo, traveled more than 44,000 kilometers (27,000 miles), the longest track distance documented for a tiger shark and possibly the longest ever published for a shark. Full tracking information can be viewed on the Nova Southeastern Univerity’s tracking site.