The Fruit of a Shark-Tagging Program
Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Conservation Corridor
Remember about the news earlier this year? William and Fred Buyle took part in a shark-tagging expedition for the Malpelo Foundation back in March 2008.
Between the two of them, they tagged 46 scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) , 4 galapagos sharks (Carcharhinus galapagensis) and 3 ragged-tooth sharks (Odontaspis ferox). Mission accomplished considering the original plan was to tag 47 scalloped hammerhead sharks and 7 ragged-tooth sharks.
What you see on the right is a satellite view of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Conservation Corridor composed of the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), the Cocos Islands (Costa Rica), and Mapelo and Gorgona Islands (Colombia). All these islands are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The arched path going from Malpelo Island to the Galapagos Islands is that of a 2.2 meter female hammershead shark which was tagged with an acoustic device during the March 2008 expedition .
In the beginning of April, the acoustic tag was detected in the Cocos Islands, a mere distance of 687 kilometers from Malpelo Island. It was established that this female shark travelled another 710 km from the Cocos Islands between the end of May and the beginning of July when the tag was again detected near Darwin & Wolf Islands which are part of the Galapagos Islands.
Thanks to the shark-tagging program, it is now demonstrated for the first time that sharks do indeed travel within the Tropical Eastern Pacific Marine Conservation Corridor. This underlines the necessity of implementing regional and international regulations in order to protect this apex predator from being eradicated through indiscriminate fishing practices.