Tiger shark crosses thirteen maritime boundaries in four weeks

A tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) tagged with a satellite transmitter by scientists and researchers from Saba, Sint Maarten and the United States has migrated across thirteen maritime boundaries, making its way from the Saba Bank to Trinidad. This 3.43m female tiger shark named ‘Quinty’ was tagged as part of the region wide Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance “Save our Sharks” project with funding from the Dutch National Postcode Lottery. Little is currently known about the status of shark populations in Dutch Caribbean waters (Garla et al., 2006; Chapman et al., 2007) and tagging studies are a pivotal first step in determining which sharks are present, where they can be found and most importantly how best to improve management and protection of these important apex predators (Hammerschlag et al., 2008).

This news article was published in BioNews 2-2017.

BioNews is produced by the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance and funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.