Sharks ready to head to South Florida

Written by:
Hans Kruit, 28 November 2013

Thousands of blacktip and spinner sharks will swim into South Florida in the next few weeks in an annual migration that yields spectacular aerial videos and occasional beach closures.

Up to 15,000 have been counted on a single day off Palm Beach County by scientists from Florida Atlantic University, and these just represent the ones visible from one flight along the coast. Like birds and manatees, the sharks come south for the winter, arriving in December and January, with numbers peaking in late January and early February.

"When they`re there, you can walk on them," said Josh Jorgensen, of Singer Island, director of the Blacktip Challenge, a five-day catch-and-release tournament along Florida's east coast that tags sharks for scientists. "I remember one time last year there must have been 500 that swam by in an hour, endless blacktips. They were 20 or 30 feet off the beach."

The sharks swim as far south as southern Broward or northern Miami-Dade County, said Stephen Kajiura, associate professor of biology at FAU, who has studied the migration. They head north in March, reaching as far as North Carolina.

Scientists say the danger to people is low, despite scary aerial videos that show vast swarms of sharks within yards of clueless swimmers. Blacktips and spinners, which typically reach lengths of five or six feet, eat mullet, grouper, snook and other fish, nothing as large as a human being.

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Hans
source: SunSentinel

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