Basking Shark Photo-id Catalogue and Sighting Database

Globally, sharks are becoming increasingly recognized as species of conservation concern. Threats to sharks in Atlantic Canada include: bycatch and entanglement in fisheries and, in the case of Basking sharks, vessel strikes. The Government of Canada Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk have funded a GMWSRS project to expand both our photo-identification catalogue of basking sharks for the Bay of Fundy and a shark sighting database.

At least six species of shark inhabit the Bay of Fundy, but little is known about their distribution, movements or occurrence in the Bay and even less so about the threats they face.

Video of a basking shark taken from a whale watching vessel July 21, 2012 south of Grand Manan Island

To learn more about sharks in the Bay of Fundy, the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station needs your help and contribution to:

1. Basking Shark Photo ID Catalogue. Photos of individual sharks can tell us whether the same sharks return to the Bay of Fundy year after year and how individuals use the Bay within the same season.

Basking shark dorsal fin photographed July 8, 2012 off Grand Manan Island

2. Shark Sighting Database. Sightings of all shark species will provide a better understanding of shark distribution and occurrence in the Bay of Fundy.

Individual Basking Sharks can be identified based on the shape of their dorsal fins and location of nicks and notches. Submit your sighting and photographs online:

• sharksightings.atlanticsharks.org
• Email: sharksightings@gmwsrs.info
• Phone (toll-free): Via Marine Animal Response Society (MARS) Hotline 1-866-567-6277

Master Student First Impressions

The following are impressions and accomplishments of Masters Student, Zachary Siders, who spent his first field season in the Bay of Fundy off Grand Manan Island in August, 2011.  Zach is a Masters Student at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

As my first summer at the GMWSRS, I was unprepared for the extreme variation in the environment. Between tidal swings, fog banks, rolling swell, and varying chop the Bay of Fundy is always fluctuating.  Despite many days of rain, fog, swell, and chop we were able to survey for sharks, assist in whale poop collection, and help colleagues from Duke University deploy dive tags on fin whales. As part of the basking shark research group, my primary role was to help deploy seven satellite pop-up tags on adult sharks. With a cumulative of 255 hours of basking shark sightings we were fortunate to deploy six out of the seven pop-up satellite tags. These deployments are to provide information on migration out of the Bay of Fundy during the winter months. This effort was part of the station’s investigation of spatial and temporal patterns in basking shark movements.

Basking Shark, second largest shark and a filter feeder on zooplankton

As an active part of this investigation, I have been begun analyzing archival sighting data acquired by Laurie Murison, through Whales 'n Sails whale watching company. Fortunately, this dataset dates back 23 years and allows me to analyze how basking sharks spatial distribution has changed over time. Additionally, this dataset will be supplemented by a data request to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. Together, this data will be used in habitat modeling the spatial distribution of basking sharks across the Bay of Fundy. Modeling this information will determine how basking shark critical habitat within the Bay of Fundy has changed across time. With the increasing prevalence of remote sensing data and detailed oceanographic information, the environment features defining this critical habitat can be elucidated. All of this information greatly increases our understanding where basking sharks occur in the Bay of Fundy, a critical habitat for these giant sharks.

Another aspect, I have begun analyzing is the dive profiling movements of basking sharks acquired through our Temperature-Depth Recording tagging efforts. These efforts have been ongoing since 2008 and have acquired 22 days of dive profiling data. This fine-scale diving information can help us understand how basking sharks utilize the extreme variations in the Bay of Fundy especially tidal fronts, temperature contours, and depth profiles. Unlike other basking shark habitats, the Bay of Fundy is extremely tidally driven as well as a protected body of water. Understanding how basking sharks utilized the unique dynamic oceanographic features can greatly enhance our understanding the ecological flexibility of these cosmopolitan creatures.

Basking shark just under the surface with only the large dorsal fin above the water surface.  Basking sharks received their name from this behaviour of coming to the surface.

Most importantly, understanding how basking sharks utilize critical habitat and where these habitats are in the Bay of Fundy can be used to further the conservation of this vulnerable species. In particular, I hope to spatial modeling and diving behavior analysis to determine the ship-strike risk to basking sharks in the bay. As these sharks spend up to 80% of their time within the 12 meter draft of cargo vessels, they are extremely vulnerable to cargo traffic travelling through the Bay of Fundy. Determining these ship-strike risks is essential for conserving basking sharks within the bay and more so, globally.

The field work this summer could not have been accomplished without the advisement of Dr. Andrew Westgate and the help of the rest of the GMWSRS senior scientists. Additionally, the help of Jared Juckiewicz, a summer research assistant, was considerable throughout the field season. The continued analysis could not be possible without Dr. Westgate, Dr. Heather Koopman, and Dr. David Johnston, and I would like to thank them for their ongoing support.

Spring Research

We have four of our researchers here at the moment. Heather Koopman and Andrew Westgate (and Arran, Skye and Nevis) are on Grand Manan for a couple of weeks to sample lobster eggs from berried females, arriving May 21. Berried females are individuals who are brooding their eggs externally on the underside of their tail. Heather is looking at energy content of the eggs and comparing this to the various sizes of the females to determine if there are particular size ranges where energy stores are better than others. Heather goes out lobster fishing with local fishermen to measure the size of the females and to collect small samples of eggs from different sized females. Heather is also sampling at different times of the year, her last sampling period was in December.

Heather and Andrew are offshore today in our research boat, "Phocoena", collecting zooplankton as part of monitoring zooplankton in the Grand Manan Basin. This monitoring was re-initiated in 2006 after a long lapse when Zach Swaim began his Master's thesis looking at lipids or fats in right whale faeces and comparing these to what is found in their favourite prey, calanoid copepods, a small zooplankton that can occur in huge concentrations, attracting filter feeders such as right whales, herring and basking sharks. Zach's research discovered that right whales can metabolize or break down waxes found in the copepods. Most mammals are not capable of this although the mechanism in right whale digestion that breaks down waxes into a usable energy source is not known at this time.

Heather's Masters student Caitlin McKinstry, began a study of basking sharks last summer, successfully attaching a data logger to one basking shark which recorded dive patterns. She will be returning this summer to try to tag additional sharks and will be interested in looking at zooplankton concentrations as well. An interesting study of satellite tracked basking sharks was recently aired on CBC radio:

"The basking shark is the world's second largest fish, and during summers, it lives a peaceful life sifting plankton from temperate ocean waters. It leads a mysterious double life, however, as during the winter, it simply disappears. Dr. Greg Skomal, a marine biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, used special tags to track the sharks' movements during the winter. He discovered that these huge animals were sneaking off for southern vacations, travelling thousands of kilometers to tropical waters in which they'd never been seen before. He suspects these trips are to the secret nursery where the basking sharks bear and raise their young."

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/08-09/qq-2009-05-23.html

Rob Ronconi and Sarah Wong arrived on Monday, May 25 and immediately headed for Kent Island and the Bowdoin Research Station. Rob is working on a comparative study in habitat use of greater shearwaters and herring gulls to confirm feeding "hot spots" in the Bay of Fundy for seabirds. He hopes to attach solar powered satellite tags to three herrring gulls that may operate for more than a year. Herring gulls are nesting this time of year and it is easier to catch the gulls on their nesting islands than at sea.