By Jasmin Malik Chua, Live Science
Contributor | January 6, 2018 06:18pm
As the Arctic blast continues to roil the
Eastern Seaboard with gusty winds and frigid temperatures, at least four
thresher sharks have been found frozen off the coast of Cape Cod.
Is Old Man Winter to blame? Probably not, as
the sharks likely died not from hypothermia but from stranding themselves in
shallow waters as they attempted to migrate south, according to Greg Skomal,
the senior fisheries scientist who leads the shark research program for the
Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game.
Unlike blue sharks, mako sharks and basking
sharks, thresher sharks tend to linger in the Gulf of Maine until late
December, Skomal said. Characterized by their long, scythe-like
tails, the animals possess endothermic abilities, meaning they can retain
their metabolic heat to a certain extent. [On the
Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]
Indeed, a recent tagging study found that the
animals leave waters only when they dip below temperatures of 46 degrees
Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). As a result, many of them don't start their
journey to warmer climes before midwinter.
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