Scientists put cameras in tiger sharks to map secret ocean areas

• Tiger Sharks are being fitted with cameras to help humans discover unexplored maritime areas.
• The mission has found 2,250 square kilometres throughout the Bahama’s Banks.
• The discoveries, covering 66,000 square kilometres, may assist the little country’s scientists to identify darker seafloor to collect carbon.

Sharks, generally considered humans’ enemies, are being fitted with cameras to assist humans to discover unexplored maritime areas. Tiger Sharks, known for their aggression, are being used in the experiment by Bahamas scientists.

The discoveries, covering 66,000 square kilometres, may assist the little country’s scientists to identify darker seagrass to collect carbon. The mission has found 2,250 square kilometres throughout the Bahama’s Banks, according to Nature Communications.

Austin Gallagher, the principal author of the study and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Beneath The Waves, stated, “This discovery should give us hope for the future of our oceans,” added, “It demonstrates how everything is connected.”

“The sharks led us to the seagrass ecosystem in the Bahamas, which we now know is likely the most significant blue carbon sink on the planet,” added, “Putting cameras on animals for science is not necessarily a new thing, but using this approach to map seafloors is a relatively new concept,” Dr Gallagher said.

“It is something we are scaling to other areas – I think it is honestly the only way to properly survey the seafloor throughout expansive and remote shallow ocean regions.”

The organisation hasn’t explained how they attached the cameras to the sharks, but no one lost a finger. Along with sharks, scientists have used turtles for similar purposes, but not intentionally.

According to James Cook University Seagrass Ecology Lab Director Associate Professor Michael Rasheed, “There are some really neat stories of satellite-tagged green turtles turning up in places where people think, ‘why would they be out there?”

“And when people have gone and had a look they’ve found these magnificent seagrass meadows in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” added, “We have, just in the Torres Strait alone, close to 13,000 sq km, and you can add that to the northern Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef seagrass, which tallies about 35,000 sq km, because they all join up – but the Bahamas is certainly a large seagrass system.”

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