Aggressive white sharks tend to form “hunting companions” groups.
Scientists have discovered a meeting place for many great white sharks in the clear blue waters of the island of Guadalupe, off the west coast of Mexico.
Dozens of sharks migrate to the island’s shores to feed each fall and winter. According to new research published March 23 in the journal Biology Letters, many tagged great white sharks formed groups during the 2017 and 2018 hunting seasons. They love to hunt for food. With animals that are already close or with animals of the same sex, they sometimes spend more than an hour swimming around together.
A pair of sharks especially surprised scientists by spending about 70 minutes swimming together – the longest time swimming together ever recorded in a great white shark.
“70 minutes is a long time for two great white sharks to swim together”said lead author of the study, Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine scientist at Florida International University.
Papastamatiou adds that prolonged interactions like these can be “social bonding” rather than just random interactions, like they’re hunting with friends.
For the study, the scientists tagged great white sharks near the island of Guadalupe from October 2017 to December 2018. These tags can track swimming speed, depth, and direction. each shark. The tags also warn each time a tagged shark comes close to another tagged shark, each containing a small camera. The tags will fall off the shark’s fin on their own in about 5 days.
More than 30 great white sharks on the island have been tagged by recent studies, giving researchers plenty of opportunities to see how they perform. The team recorded hundreds of social interactions between great whites, some short, some much longer.
In general, male sharks prefer to pair up with other male sharks, and female sharks prefer the company of other females, but each shark’s social behavior varies widely. One shark interacted with dozens of other sharks over a 30-hour period before losing its tag, while one kept the tag for five days and was only accompanied by two other sharks.
Many of the great white shark encounters happen near seal breeding grounds, the researchers say, suggesting that perhaps the sharks pair up to take advantage of each other’s predation.
Papastamatiou said: “They don’t really work together, but it could be a way to share information.”
Due to the small size of the study, the scientists say further observations are needed to draw any conclusions about the link between the great white sharks in Guadalupe.
Reference: LiveScience
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