The second year of a project to track basking sharks in Scottish waters gets underway
July 2013. Scientists from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the University of Exeter are heading out to the Inner Hebrides to tag another 27 of the huge sharks with satellite tracking tags. The tags, which let the public follow the movements of a number of the sharks online, will collect data that will give the team an insight into their behaviour during the summer months.
The work is part of a wider programme of marine research led by SNH and Marine Scotland, to help Government and others plan for the sustainable management of the sea. Results from the tagging project will help the Scottish Government decide whether a Marine Protected Area should be put in place to safeguard the sharks and help balance environmental interests with industry and recreation.
The tagging project, which began last July, was set up to find out more about the life cycle of the large numbers of sharks that gather around the islands of Coll, Tiree and Canna every summer.
20 sharks tagged in 2012
Some of the 20 sharks tagged last year stayed in the area between 5 and 57 days before the tags detached, the sharks moved deeper or they swam south. Depth data collected so far has shown that sharks mainly occupy the top 250m of the water column, although two sharks were recorded down at 1000m, off the edge of the continental shelf.
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