Giant Bull Shark Surprises Researchers

Giant Bull Shark Surprises Researchers

Scientist Neil Hammerschlag was out cruising the reefs near the Florida Keys, hunting for sharks for research aimed at keeping them out of display cases and in the water.  In many places, these iconic predators are becoming extinct.

Hammerschlag, a research assistant professor at the University of Miami, and the director of its R. J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program, spends almost every weekend in southern Florida dragging baited, shark-safe lines behind a boat, hoping they can catch one of his research subjects.

When he and his team catch one, they outfit the shark with either an ID tag, take small samples of muscles and fin and a vial's worth of blood.  They also check to see if the shark is pregnant.  Then send the shark on its way. The whole routine takes only about five minutes.

On May 27, they got luckier. Something tagged at the other end of the 75-foot (23-meter) line, and Hammerschlag began to pull it in.  He could tell it was something different.

"It's a lot of work to bring up a line, but I can usually do it myself," he says. This time, he needed help.  He and a colleague joined forces. "We didn't know if we were pulling up a sunken boat, a monster shark, a school bus – we had no idea which it was," Hammerschlag told OurAmazingPlanet.

"As soon as it came to the surface, it literally took my breath away, it was so big," Hammerschlag said. They caught a massive bull shark, the region's top predator.  The shark was about 10 feet long and, the researchers estimated, over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms).

"It's one of the biggest bull sharks I've ever caught, and it's the biggest bull shark I've ever tagged," Hammerschlag said – and he's tagged more than 1,000 sharks. "When this guy rocked up, it just took my breath away."

It was found out their catch was a female. Like many other shark species, female bull sharks are bigger than males.  But bull sharks of either sex are nothing to be trifled with. Like great white sharks and tiger sharks, bull sharks have serrated teeth – an accessory that allows them to rip and tear apart their meals.

Posted by James Fried on Friday June 08 2012, 3:01 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Nation. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0