Some shark species swim towards quite distant targets, at least some of the time, whereas others seemingly move randomly within a small home range.
By feeding tracking data from three shark species into a model of terrestrial animal movement, Yannis Papastamatiou at the University of Florida in Gainesville and his colleagues found that tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) made 'directed walks' at scales of 6–8 kilometres, and thresher sharks (Alopias vulpinus) did so at scales of 400–1,900 metres. Both species have large home ranges.
In contrast, reef sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus) have small home ranges and they showed random, unoriented movement at the scales examined.
The findings could help to predict how sharks will disperse in the face of future challenges such as overfishing and climate change, the authors say.
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Sharks swim with direction. Nature 471, 138–139 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471138e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/471138e
