Field sampling for our porbeagle project started in June this year around Loch Swilly (Donegal, Ireland). This year we teamed up with scientists from Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) to deploy satellite tags and broaden the scope of our projects.

Seven pop-up satellite tags have been deployed off Ireland so far this year, and tagging is expected to continue until November. Most of the porbeagles encountered by our team this summer were relatively small females around 1-1.5 m in length. However, there were several reports of large female porbeagles (over 250 lb) caught by sport anglers in the area. The tags will remain attached to the sharks for around 4-6 months before detachment and we are hoping for successful data returns early in the New Year.

We have also recently joined up with a team of Canadian scientists to deploy tags on porbeagles around the Faroe Islands in November. There have been several reports of large, mature females in this area over the years, but few studies have attempted to study them there. We hope that tags deployed on mature females in this region will give us new insight in to the birthing grounds of porbeagles in the northeast Atlantic.