Rhode Island shark researcher Jon Dodd has a busy summer ahead of him.
Dodd, executive director of the Atlantic Shark Institute in Wakefield, will spend the summer trying to catch and tag a couple dozen sharks, dropping video cameras into the water to peek at them in their natural habitat and monitoring acoustic equipment to get a better idea of their travel patterns off the coast of Rhode Island.
In launching the institute’s “most robust and aggressive research plan,” Dodd hopes to get a clearer picture of the types of sharks that swim off the Rhode Island coast, their health and behavior.
“These sharks are critical to the health of our oceans in a wide variety of ways and that makes this research all the more important,” Dodd said. “We can’t continue to take over 100 million sharks out of the ocean, every year, and not create long-term issues to the health and well-being of our planet.”
Last year, the Atlantic Shark Institute detected nine different great white sharks in Rhode Island waters, with eight of those being detected at Block Island and one in Point Judith.
But the institute’s research isn’t limited to great whites. It is also studying four other species: shortfin mako, thresher, porbeagle and blue. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has designated the shortfin mako as endangered; the great white, porbeagle and common thresher as vulnerable; and the blue shark as near threatened, according to Dodd.
This year, the institute should have a better chance of detecting and observing sharks, because it’s putting more acoustic receivers into the water and will also spend more time dropping baited video cameras off the side of boats to search for sharks.
The acoustic receivers can pick up the same 200 white sharks that have been pinned with satellite tracking tags. The institute has placed 12 of the receivers in Rhode Island waters, most off Block Island, and one off Fishers Island, New York.
New this year is a receiver just east of Scarborough Beach, which will help determine if Rhode Islanders have been sharing the popular state beach with these apex predators.
Dodd and other researchers will also get out on the water once or twice a week to drop so-called ‘baited remote underwater video systems’ into the water to find and observe sharks.
The institute also plans to catch and tag 25 sharks. In a partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, the institute will for the first time use tags that can detect sharks any time they surface for more than a few seconds. They don’t have to be near receivers.
“The vast, vast majority of the ocean has no acoustic telemetry present and some of these tagged sharks would never be detected,” Dodd said.
Researchers plan to catch and tag five juvenile great whites, 10 female blue sharks and 10 porbeagle sharks.
Dodd believes the smaller, younger sharks are more likely to be found in Rhode Island waters, where they can feed on sea bass, striped bass and dogfish. The bigger, older white sharks, he said, are more likely to be drawn to Cape Cod, where they can feed on seals, which can weigh 900 pounds, too big for a smaller shark.
Another aspect of the research involves porbeagle sharks. Researchers plan to tag 10. If they find pregnant porbeagle sharks, they will use uterine tags that will notify researchers when the sharks give birth.
