Not so solitary predators? Great white shark duo appear to be travelling together | 24CA News

Jekyll and Simon maintain exhibiting up in all the identical locations — which is bizarre, as a result of they’re nice white sharks.

The apex predators are broadly believed to be solitary creatures, not depending on household networks or group dynamics to navigate the oceans, in contrast to a lot of their marine neighbours.

“What we’ve noticed with the case of Simon and Jekyll … was an incredible, I would say, synchronicity in their movements,” shark scientist Bob  Hueter instructed As It Happens visitor host Paul Hunter. 

Hueter is the chief scientist at Ocearch, a U.S.-based marine analysis institute that is at the moment monitoring 92 nice white sharks. Two of these sharks, Jekyll and Simon, had been tagged off the coast of the state of Georgia in December 2022.

Over the final eight months, his crew began to note a sample emerge with Jekyll and Simon — their trackers maintain pinging in the identical a part of the ocean on the identical time.

The unlikely duo have travelled the identical migratory route from Georgia to New England to Maine and into Canada, the place they’ve spent the summer season looking off the coasts of Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 

By the time they reached Nova Scotia, Hueter says “it became almost like a lockstep migration of the two.”

Not side-by-side

But the scientist desires to be clear that when he says they’re in the identical place, he means inside a couple of kilometres of one another. 

“It is really important to emphasize we’re not talking about two animals that are swimming side-by-side,” he stated. 

“They probably are not, you know, able to see each other except maybe at times when they cross each other’s paths. They’re not communicating with each other in any way that we would understand. But they’re just so synchronized.”

Conservation biologist Mikki McComb-Kobza — who has beforehand labored with Ocearch however just isn’t concerned on this analysis — says she’s excited to see what scientists will study from Simon and Jekyll.

“It’s really, really something we haven’t seen before there,” McComb-Kobza, govt director of the Ocean First Institute in Boulder, Colo., instructed CBC.

“What it suggests is that, you know, there may be a migratory route that these … animals, or white sharks in general, are following, and we just don’t know that because we haven’t tagged that many individuals.”

Brothers?

Jekyll and Simon are each juvenile males of roughly the identical age, which leads Hueter and his colleagues to suspect they could be genetically associated — perhaps even brothers. 

The researchers have taken tissue samples of each creatures and are at the moment ready for the outcomes of DNA checks. 

“If they are, in fact, siblings and they’ve undergone these migrations, these very specific points, it revolutionizes our perspective on the genetic basis of this migratory behaviour,” he stated.

It would recommend, he stated, that sharks aren’t so solo in spite of everything. Potentially, they journey in household packs. 

“That’s a very different perspective from … sort of a mindless, you know, big predator that’s just cruising around, following water temperatures and currents, and following the prey,” he stated.

“This is more directed, it’s more genetically programmed. And for us as biologists, it’s in some ways more exciting.”

‘Canada is white shark territory’

It might additionally affect how scientists strategy nice white conservation, because it pertains to populations in particular areas. 

“If you don’t protect what needs to be protected … you’re not just wiping out a sort of a sample of the population, but you’re wiping out a whole genetic component of the population,” he stated. “Wiping out families, essentially.” 

And conservation in Canada is essential to shark survival, he says. The East Coast has seen an explosion of nice whites lately, one thing many specialists have credited to robust federal protections, not only for the sharks, however for the seals they feast upon. 

Since Ocearch began tagging and monitoring the animals, Hueter says one factor has change into abundantly clear: “Canada is white shark territory in the summertime, no question about it.”

And if the sharks aren’t associated?

“It could be a coincidence. There might be more to it. But I think that is what science represents — is that as we learn more, we get additional questions,” McComb-Kobza stated.

“I think that’s the really exciting part of this, is that as we learn where these animals are going through these satellite tags, it allows us to understand and ask more questions.”

Scientists are simply beginning to scratch the floor of nice white shark behaviour, she stated, they usually could must throw out lots of their earlier assumptions.

“We don’t spend enough time underwater with our eyes or our cameras to know what these animals are doing,” McComb-Kobza stated.