Scientists Hire Sharks to Forecast Hurricanes, Finally Give Sharks Positive PR Assignment

ATLANTIC OCEAN — University of Delaware researchers are turning sharks into roaming oceanographic weather stations in hopes that data collected by the animals can help scientists predict how powerful hurricanes will become before reaching the American coast.

After fifty years of Jaws, six Sharknado movies and approximately eleven billion local-news reports titled SHARK SPOTTED IN OCEAN, the sharks finally have a good publicist.

Researchers attach small electronic CTD tags to sharks' dorsal fins. CTD stands for conductivity, temperature and depth: the sensors measure salinity-related electrical conductivity, water temperature and how deeply the animal dives as it travels through the Atlantic.

Then the shark does what scientists have historically struggled to convince research vessels to do cheaply:

It swims around.

Every time a tagged shark surfaces sufficiently for the instrument to communicate with satellites, measurements can be transmitted back to researchers in near real time.

No salary.

No mileage reimbursement.

No mandatory staff retreat.

Nature's perfect employee.

The project is led by University of Delaware marine scientists including Aaron Carlisle, with doctoral researcher Caroline Wiernicki helping conduct the field work. The idea builds upon an established technique in which scientists have used instrumented animals—particularly elephant seals—to collect measurements in remote parts of the ocean that are difficult and expensive to sample continuously with ships.

Sharks offer several advantages.

They are widespread.

They move enormous distances.

They naturally travel through the water column.

And unlike an oceanographic buoy, they possess an advanced autonomous propulsion system fueled principally by other fish.

Researchers are particularly interested in the ocean's mixed layer, the upper section of water containing much of the heat available to tropical storms.

Warm ocean water is hurricane fuel.

A storm moving across a deep reservoir of warm water can continue drawing energy even as its winds churn the surface. If that warm layer is shallower, the hurricane may stir cooler water upward and weaken its own fuel supply. Better measurements of how much heat actually exists beneath the surface can therefore improve forecasts of storm intensity.

That is important because predicting where a hurricane will go and predicting how strong it will be when it gets there are related but distinct problems.

The ocean underneath the storm matters.

Satellites see the surface beautifully.

Sharks have elected to investigate downstairs.

Researchers favor species that both range through useful portions of the North Atlantic and surface frequently enough to transmit data. Candidates identified by the team include shortfin makos, blue sharks, smooth hammerheads and juvenile great whites.

Thus, somewhere off the East Coast, a great white may currently be performing unpaid climate science.

LinkedIn headline:

Predator | Oceanographic Research Associate | Apex-Level Data Solutions

Tagging begins when migratory sharks approach the U.S. East Coast in spring. Researchers travel roughly 30 to 40 miles offshore, deploy baited lines and may wait several hours before catching a suitable shark.

Once alongside the research vessel, the procedure becomes unexpectedly NASCAR.

Carlisle described the tagging crew as operating like a pit crew, completing the process in less than five minutes. Researchers conduct a health assessment and attach the instrument using materials designed eventually to corrode so the tag falls away. Animal-care oversight is intended to minimize harm, both because harming the shark would be ethically unacceptable and because a stressed shark provides shitty scientific data.

This may be the first research program whose quality-control protocol can be summarized as:

Do not piss off the hammerhead.

The idea is still experimental.

Scientists are testing whether sharks can provide enough measurements, from useful enough places, often enough to meaningfully improve ocean and hurricane models. Nobody is replacing satellites, aircraft, buoys or conventional research platforms with a squadron of unionized great whites.

But if the approach works, shark-collected profiles could fill observational gaps along the western North Atlantic and improve information available to coastal communities from North Carolina through Massachusetts as storms approach.

This becomes particularly interesting against the backdrop of warming oceans.

Hurricane intensity depends on many atmospheric and oceanic conditions, and climate change does not simply manufacture hurricanes like a vending machine. But additional ocean heat can increase the potential intensity of storms that do form.

Which means humanity's response has now reached the wonderfully ecological point where one consequence of understanding a warming ocean may involve asking a 12-foot predatory fish to check the thermometer for us.

Wiernicki offered perhaps the best description of the entire enterprise.

Popular culture portrays sharks as spectacular monsters.

In the actual study, she compared one to “Bob from Accounting”, clocking in with temperature profiles before returning to its ordinary day.

That may ultimately be the greatest contribution of the project.

Not merely better hurricane prediction.

Rebranding.

The shark has spent half a century accused of maliciously occupying beaches where humans voluntarily enter its house wearing meat-colored swimwear.

Now the shark may help warn those same humans that a hurricane is coming.

It is gathering temperature and salinity.

It is transmitting scientific data.

It has completed its physical.

It has accepted no compensation.

And when the assignment is finished, the tag politely falls off and the shark returns to the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, most office workers cannot get Microsoft Teams to recognize the fucking microphone.

The sharks are doing fine.

Ron Taylor smiles from the afterlife.