By Eric Johnson

Courtesy UNC@Work

The news this summer of several shark attacks on the North Carolina coast came as a surprise to many marine scientists. Severe shark attacks are extraordinarily rare; far more people are killed by cows each year than sharks.

But while attacks are unusual, sharks are more common than most people realize. North Carolina waters are a rich environment for the apex predator.

“We have a biomass of sharks in North Carolina you wouldn’t believe,” said Chuck Bangley, a researcher in East Carolina University’s Coastal Resource Management program. “If sharks were actually interested in people, you’d barely be able to dip a toe in.”

Though the sharks aren’t much interested in us, Bangley and other researchers are deeply interested in the role these marine predators play in our coastal ecosystem.

Bangley spends his days catching and tracking different species as they move through our waters and migrate up and down the east coast. He and his team have perfected the art of shark surgery — implanting a tiny “pinger” under the skin of a shark before releasing it back into the wild. Newly-caught sharks are turned onto their backs, which induces a kind of catatonic trance, before Bangley and his fellow researchers carefully implant the tracker.

“We get really, really well-trained before we do this,” he assured me. “But it’s still a little stressful the first couple times.”

Those unique pingers are picked up by underwater acoustic arrays installed up and down the eastern seaboard. Some are maintained by state fisheries agencies, some by universities, and still others by the federal government. Even the U.S. Navy plays a role in helping track shark migrations.

What they’re finding, so far, is that North Carolina seems to be a gathering ground for both cold-water species that tend to swim north and warmer-water sharks that spend much of the year further south. We appear to be in a shark sweet spot.

Bangley thinks that may be a good thing for our marine fisheries. His research focuses on the role sharks play in keeping other fish-eating predators in check, which may promote the growth of fish populations.

“They have a huge influence in regulating the whole marine ecosystem,” Bangley said. “If sharks are actually guarding finfish nurseries, that may impact things like red drum populations and other important fisheries.” By scaring off or eating the kind of predators that target juvenile fish, sharks may actually support healthy fish stocks.

There’s a lot more research to be done in mapping shark populations, especially in sound-side waters. Bangley, who grew up in Rhode Island before earning his master’s and pursuing a PhD at East Carolina, is happy to keep at it.

“Basically, I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was 5,” he said. “I never quite grew out of it.”

Photo credit: UNC Institute of Marine Sciences