Sharks are one of the most mysterious organisms on this planet. Compared to terrestrial animals we really don’t know a whole lot about them. If we wanted to study land animals, it would be much easier because we share largely the same habitat. However, if we wanted to study a Great White in their natural habitat it would be much more difficult due to the facts that we need a great deal of resources, ships that can get out to the depths that they live at, and the technology to study such large animals.

We can study their movement via trackers which can study depth, distance, and speed. This provides crucial information on where they go and when. With that information we can study the reason they move to said places. One thing we have very little information on is how they behave when they move from place to place. There have been studies showing very rare behavior where this solitary animal has migrated with other White sharks. A reason for their group travel could be that there is an abundance of prey and migrating together increases the chances of successfully getting a meal. But this behavior is usually for short period of time. One study shows that a pair of White sharks made the entire journey together from the southeast United States all the way up to Canada along the Atlantic Coast (https://tinyurl.com/tv4z4nae).

This study is revolutionary in the study of white shark behavior because the sharks made the entire journey together, which is the first recorded journey of this nature. This opens the door to a whole new set of questions like what if this is a new behavioral adaptation that white sharks are exhibiting? Does this mean that we will see more journeys of this nature or is this a one-off fluke? Are they evolving to be more of a social animal during these long migrations? All very important questions which hopefully we can get the answers to. More research needs to be done in this field to try to understand their behavior so we can better understand why they do the things they do. But also, to educate people on these mysterious organisms.

Image attribution to Terry Gross: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_shark.jpg