Winter 2024 39 PHOTO BY FIRSTNAME LAST CREDIT TK The shark’s cool, freckled skin feels like finest grade sandpaper. When Personius’ hand catches between it and boat, the grad student comes away with a bloody, dime-sized shark burn. “A rite of passage,” he says, getting out the Band-Aids. The team collects a blood sample — from the shark, not the student — plus a bit of muscle and a snip of dorsal fin; these will help reveal who is related to whom and provide information about the shark’s diet.An external tag gives Chapple’s email address, asking anyone who catches the shark to notify him. Some sharks in Schulte’s project also get an acoustic tag inside their bodies to track where they go for 10 years.With bare hands and pliers, Chapple pries the fishing hook from the shark’s jaw. By now, you might be thinking, “Poor widdle sharky,” but rest assured, sharks are built tough. Their wounds heal quickly. Anesthesia would put the shark at risk, as releasing it half-dazed would make it easy prey for other sharks. Sevengills are also chill, as sharks go. Out of the water, this one lies still, with just an occasional flex of her tail. Even shark sex is considerably rougher than this alien abduction experience. Speaking of which, now begins a process new even to Chapple. He opens a squeeze bottle of blue gel and a portable ultrasound machine. Is this shark a mama-to-be? The new director of OSU’s Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station, James Sulikowski, is a renowned shark expert. “The holy grail of shark science is to determine where mom sharks give birth,” he said. “They’re carrying the next generation. If we don’t protect the moms, we can’t protect the babies.” Sulikowski and collaborators have developed satellite tags and successfully inserted them in the uteruses of pregnant hammerheads and tiger sharks. During birth, the tag pops out, documenting the location and timing.To find pregnant sharks in the first place — especially those too large to bring on board — Sulikowski has developed a submersible ultrasound that can identify embryos in free-swimming moms. ↖ Once the shark is aboard, the crew’s work begins.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==