New research reveals shark superhighways an...( Boston Mass.The worlds sharks are di...)

Boston, Mass.The worlds sharks are disappearing. These fearsome yet charismatic fish continue to fall victim to overfishing and many are now at risk of extinction as a result. New research shows that open-ocean sharks are particularly threatened from overfishing, and other work shows that the deeper sharks live, the longer it takes for their populations to recover. Yet researchers are just now learning critical details of their behavior, including the fact that some species migrate quickly along superhighway routes and congregate at established stepping stone sites.

A panel of researchers will discuss these insights, as well as strategies for shark conservation, at a press conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Boston, MA on Sunday, February 17, at 3pm ET.

Sharks can evoke an image of nomadic loners, patrolling the high seas aimlessly in search of prey. However, new research suggests that shark migration is anything but random, and that these efficient swimmers instead move along fixed superhighway routes between well-established gathering places.

Peter Klimley, director of the Biotelemetry Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, has used electronic tags to track scalloped hammerhead sharks along their migration routes in the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean. Their results suggest that these sharks speed between a series of stepping stone sites, near coastal island groups ranging from Mexico to Ecuador.

Hammerhead sharks are not evenly dispersed throughout the seas, but concentrated at seamounts and offshore islands, Klimley says. Hence, enforcing reserves around these areas will go far to protecting to these species, and will provide the public with places for viewing sharks in their habitat.

The Scalloped Hammerhead is not alone in its habits. The great white shark, perhaps the most universally recognizable species in the ocean, also appears to retu
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