Overview
Introduction
to Sharks
Tagging and Migration
What Does Tagging Have To Do With Migration?
How Are Sharks Tagged?
Latitude and Longitude: Recording and Reporting Locations
Workbook
Activities
for Classroom
Shark Tagging Learning Activity
Bull Sharks
Bull Sharks, with teeth resembling the great white shark’s, cruise along the continental shelves. This means that they are a coastal species, commonly found close inshore. Bull sharks will eat an enormous range of prey and carrion. They are gray on top with an off-white underside and a wide, blunt head.
The bull shark is especially unique because it is the only wide-ranging salt water shark known to penetrate far up fresh water rivers to take up short term residence in lagoons, bays, river mouths, freshwater tributaries and lakes. Clearly bull sharks can live in both salt and freshwater environments for a period of time, a remarkable physical adaptation. They have been known to inhabit Lake Nicaragua, where they regularly navigate the rapids of the San Juan River as they travel out to the sea and back again. They have been located 2000 miles up the Amazon River, as well as in the Zambezi, Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the coastal lagoons of Florida and 160 miles up the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana.
Researchers believe that the bull shark may be one of the most dangerous of tropical sharks due to its serrated teeth, its massive jaws and its wide ranging appetite. Along with the great white and the tiger shark, it is certainly one of the few sharks that have been known to attack humans and may be responsible for attacks attributed to crocodiles or great whites. At Mote Marine Laboratory, senior scientist Dr. Perry Gilbert conducted an experiment in which he trained a bottlenose dolphin to recognize a sandbar shark and to butt the shark in order to ward it off. When a bull shark of the same size was introduced into the tank, the dolphin “refused to approach it and harass it,” possibly because it recognized the bull shark as much more dangerous to approach.
Copyright © Ocean Of Know