Project

Migration mechanics, USA

Species
  • Sharks
Years funded
  • 2017, 2018
Status
  • Active
Project type
  • Research
Description

Every year thousands of blacktip sharks migrate along the coast of South Florida. Marianne will film the aggregation with drones and then use her knowledge of engineering and physics to understand how the animals move. This is the first time that shark-swimming kinematics will be studied in the wild!

Migration mechanics, USA

Marianne Porter

Project leader
About the project leader

I study the mechanics of how sharks swim and it is no surprise that I enjoy talking about swimming all day long. Although I was born in a desert, I am at home in the water. I grew up in Arizona and learned to swim at about the same time that I learned to walk. Since then my life has revolved around water and swimming. My love of water extends to any body of water and I am especially attracted to the raw power of rivers and oceans.

I am incredibly fortunate in that I have been able to leverage the...

PROJECT LOCATION : Southeast Florida, USA
Related Blogs
By Braden Ruddy & Marianne Porter, 4th July 2019
The Unusual Suspects
While South Florida, USA is known to host our annual black-tipped visitors (Carcharhinus limbatus) in the winter months, there are a multitude of species that inhabit our nearshore waters throughout the year. We have been able to document interesting encounters using our lab’s aerial drone…
By Braden Ruddy, 25th June 2019
Learning to Fly
Winter in North America is over and blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus) aggregations in South Florida (USA) have dispersed. Graduate and undergraduate students from the Florida Atlantic Biomechanics lab are working to process another year’s worth of drone footage. This year was important because we were…
By Braden Ruddy, Marianne Porter, 21st January 2019
Underwater Looking Glass
Now that the winter months are upon us, we are making preparations in South Florida for our annual visitors, the blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus). With these magnificent marine megafauna aggregating just off the coastline, our lab utilizes underwater cameras to monitor their numbers, behaviors, and…
By Ryan Stolee, 20th December 2018
Too hot, too cold, just right: Tracking shark movements in an overwinter site
Imagine a sunny, summer midday… maybe you have an icy drink in one hand, a big floppy hat to shade yourself, and a gentle breeze to keep you at just the right warm-but-enjoyable temperature. Now take away the breeze, the floppy hat, and the icy…
By Braden Ruddy, 21st May 2018
The Sky’s the Limit
Winter has come and gone in Florida, and the human snowbirds have flown back up to their roosts in the North, and the annual migration of blacktip sharks (Carcarhinus limbatus) in the Western Atlantic have done the same. All winter, students were working diligently to…
By Marianne Porter, 20th March 2018
Are we there yet? How about now?
It’s wintertime in south Florida, and we have a lot of winter visitors of the human variety. We also have thousands of shark visitors too. Every year, thousands of blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) from the Western Atlantic migrate south to Palm Beach County. For the…
Project details

Migration mechanics: understanding swimming kinematics of a marine apex predator

Key objective

This study will capitalize upon the unique blacktip aggregation to assess the impact of climate change on migratory marine predators. Warming oceans drive the sharks to higher latitudes, increasing the distance of their annual migration and energetic costs en route. We aim to examine the movement ecology of blacktip sharks.

Why is this important

Every year in the Western Atlantic, blacktip sharks undertake an extensive migration, correlated with water temperature, swimming approximately 1.1 million body lengths each way from Southeast Florida to Long Island, New York and back. As global temperatures increase, the blacktip northern range has expanded correspondingly, and they now migrate up to 50% farther than reported historically. A range increase of this magnitude imposes a significant energetic burden on the sharks as well as an impact on the local ecosystem as they extract nutrients. Additionally, throughout their range, this species is commercially harvested and recreationally targeted. Global temperatures are continuing to increase and it is important to have an understanding of the blacktip’s movement ecology. Every winter in Southeast Florida, the sharks aggregate for several months by the tens of thousands. These aggregations present a rare opportunity to instrument many individuals as well as examine their swimming kinematics in the wild.

Background

The broad aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of one of the most massive shark migrations in the Western Atlantic. Blacktip sharks exhibit a well-known, but poorly studied, seasonal migration along the US eastern seaboard. Hundreds of thousands of individuals migrate from summer mating/birthing grounds in Georgia and the Carolinas down to overwintering grounds in Southeast Florida. There, they form massive aggregations in nearshore waters from January-April. The tremendous number of sharks, in close proximity to popular swimming beaches, is visually engaging and always commands significant media attention. This attention in turn provides an opportunity to inform the public about the sharks and their important role in the marine ecosystem. Recent work has determined that the blacktip shark migration closely correlates with water temperature. As global water temperatures have increased, their northern range has expanded correspondingly. As a result, their migration is now up to 50% farther than it was just 70 years ago. Expansion of their summer range to higher latitudes will likely result in the establishment of new mating/pupping grounds and nursery areas. Effective conservation and management requires a delineation and knowledge of this new critical habitat. The increased migratory travel distance and duration imposes a significant energetic burden on the sharks. As they travel farther north, these upper trophic level predators will exploit local resources, which have not previously been subjected to this degree of predation. The increased level of predation, due to the presence of these additional predators, will directly impact the trophic ecology with potential cascading effects through multiple trophic levels.

This project plans to study these various aspects of the blacktip shark migration to better understand the entire phenomenon from the level of the individual to the entire coastal ecosystem. This project will determine the migratory route of blacktip sharks in the Western Atlantic. Recent advances in acoustic telemetry have provided a mechanism to collect data on swimming kinematics of free swimming fishes in the wild using 3D accelerometer enabled acoustic transmitters. We will instrument blacktip sharks with these 3D accelerometer transmitters and use the data to estimate the energetic cost of their migration. The instrumented sharks will be detected by an array of acoustic receivers distributed along the coast of North America from Florida to Nova Scotia. Data from these receivers are shared freely among the researchers who are members of collaborative telemetry networks. The movements of the blacktips will be reconstructed from the receiver detections and their seasonal migratory pattern delineated. From this we will determine the northern and southern extents of their migratory range, and identify critical habitat used by these sharks throughout the entire year. In addition, the 3D accelerometer data will provide information on their swimming kinematics during their migration and when they are overwintering in Southeast Florida. These accelerometer data can be used to estimate energy expenditure and thus how much energy (in the form of prey calories) the sharks must extract from the environment. The massive aggregations of sharks each winter in the shallow, clear waters of Southeast Florida provide a unique opportunity to ground truth the accelerometer data with direct observation of free swimming sharks. This will be accomplished by collecting high definition video of the sharks from cameras mounted on aerial drones. Blacktip sharks are harvested commercially and targeted recreationally so to provide effective management, it is vital to know about their migration and where the entire population is distributed throughout the year. As the northern limit of their migration expands due to global warming, the sharks will also establish new critical habitat, which must be identified to provide appropriate conservation.

Aims & objectives
  • Delineate northern range of blacktip migration. Sharks will be instrumented with acoustic transmitters detectable by the FACT and ACT arrays of receivers distributed along the coast of the Western Atlantic from Florida to Nova Scotia. Their movements will be reconstructed from the receiver detections and their northern distribution limit assessed.
  • Identify critical habitat. Blacktip sharks form large aggregations in nearshore waters off Southeast Florida each winter. Females are known to birth their young in bays from Northern Florida to the Carolinas. By determining where these sharks travel and reside we will be able to identify critical habitat necessary for conservation.
  • Quantify swimming kinematics during the migration. The acoustic transmitters will include 3D accelerometers, which will provide relative swimming speed, including diurnal differences. The accelerometer data will be recorded by the FACT and ACT receiver arrays. These data will be used to estimate the duration and energetic cost of the migration.
  • Volitional swimming kinematics. An aerial drone will film schooling sharks in the clear waters off Southeast Florida during the winter to enable quantification of tail beat frequency, which will be  correlated with the 3D accelerometer data. These data will calibrate the swimming kinematics data from objective 3.