SuperShark

Her route was strikingly direct, her pace astoundingly swift. The female great white shark traveled farther than any other shark previously known to science, from the waters off South Africa to the coast of Australia and back again—covering more than 12,400 miles in total, in just under nine months. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists who tracked the epic journey named the shark Nicole, after Australian actress and white shark lover Nicole Kidman. A record not just for distance, but for the fastest known return migration of any swimming marine organism, Nicole’s feat will change long-held notions about how these charismatic predators move through the world’s oceans.

WCS researcher Dr. Ramón Bonfil, shark expert and lead author of the study, and his colleagues from the Marine and Coastal Management Department of South Africa and the White Shark Trust began following Nicole on November 7, 2003 via a satellite tag attached to her dorsal fin. The champion great white was part of a larger research project on the species’ migration, which included 31 other white sharks that followed at least three different migration patterns, including wide-ranging coastal trips up and down the eastern side of South Africa. But Nicole chose her own path, into the vast and deep basin of the Indian Ocean. Although she took frequent plunges to depths as great as 3,215 feet—another record for white sharks—while crossing the Indian Ocean, she spent most of her time swimming along the surface. Her course has led researchers to suspect that great white sharks may use celestial cues for transoceanic navigation.

Ninety-nine days later, as Nicole cruised a mile from the shore just south of the Exmouth Gulf in western Australia, her tag detached and floated to the surface with all of her secrets. This leg of the journey alone—some 6,897 miles—was one for the record book. But when Nicole’s distinctively notched dorsal fin was sighted again on August 20, 2004 back in Gansbaai, South Africa, this intrepid great white had completed a migration route that may cast that entire book under suspicion.

 “This is one of the most significant discoveries about white shark ecology and suggests we might have to rewrite the life history of this powerful fish,” said Dr. Bonfil. “More importantly, Nicole has shown us that separate populations of great white sharks may be more directly connected than previously thought, and that wide-ranging white sharks that are nationally protected in places such as South Africa and Australia are much more vulnerable to human fishing in the open oceans than we previously thought.” Nicole’s complete journey is by far the longest distance traveled by any shark known to science. By comparison, a whale shark tagged in the Gulf of California was tracked with a satellite transmitter traveling some 8,078 miles to the western Pacific.

Great white sharks, along with many other shark species, are thought to be endangered by a combination of game fishing and commercial harvests for their fins, which are highly sought in Asian fish markets for shark fin soup. There are no exact figures on regional or worldwide populations of great whites.

The great white migration study was published in the most recent edition of the journal Science. An interactive GIS simulation recreating the trip of Nicole from South Africa to Australia can be seen at http://netviewer.usc.edu/intro.html.

Click here to view video a clip of Dr. Ramon Bonfil tagging a great white shark.

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