SharkFest 2022

We may have said “Bye bye blacktips!” in our May newsletter, but July brought a different shark invasion to our televisions: SharkFest on National Geographic! The research of FAU Marine Lab Principal Investigators, graduate students, and alumni are featured in several programs. For one, the “Space Coast Scare” episode of  When Sharks Attack, Dr. Stephen Kajiura discusses the blacktip shark migration in which blacktips travel south to our waters in mass every winter.  This is the largest shark migration in US coastal waters! Blacktips migrate from South Carolina to Southeast Florida to winter in warmer waters. In the same episode, Elasmobranch Research Lab graduate student Caroline Sullivan deploys acoustic equipment to test if low frequency sounds attract blacktip sharks.

National Geographic’s Sky Sharks provides a bird’s-eye view of how drones and planes are used to study where sharks are in the ocean! This program highlights Dr. Kajiura’s shark migration surveys from the sky. Dr. Kajiura, who is also a pilot, flies a plane to get an aerial view of the migration and to count how many sharks are just off our Southeast Florida shores. Spoiler alert: he sees thousands! Dr. Kajiura also spots a hammerhead shark that came to shallow water to prey on these blacktip sharks. Was this giant predator successful?

Other FAU researchers, alumni, and collaborators, such as Minorities in Marine Science panelist Carlee Jackson, are featured on programs like Planet Shark, Planet Shark Ocean Voyagers, Shark Attack Files, and Jaws Invasion just to name a few! The FAU Marine Lab is always thrilled to give our research a broader audience. Beat the heat and take a bite out of the swirling misconceptions of sharks by watching us on SharkFest this summer on  National Geographic Networks  and Disney+.