Earlier this week, there were numerous shark sightings in the waters of New Smyrna Beach. The sharks here are said to be migrating north as the waters get warmer and that they are merely here to eat on the way. The species has not been 100% ID'd, but they are believed to be Lemon Sharks. Some girls were interviewed since they were surfing when the sharks came around and bumped their boards. They said they started screaming and noticed that the sharks swam away, like they were more afraid of the girls than the girls were of them.
Sharks in NSB
There is a video in this hyperlink for anyone who wants to see them swimming, taken via drone camera above the water.
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| Sharks in waters less than a foot deep in NSB. |
I wish that I could have had the opportunity to see these sharks and tried to use a few of them for my IRP. Also, I wish I knew for a fact what species they were.
As of my project, the tagging process has been determined to be done if we can get the tags. Otherwise, we will just be fishing for sharks at a few different locations off the beach shoreline and the intercoastal off piers. The recorded data will be species, location, gender, lengths, weights if possible (since some of them might be really big), and any other information we can acquire. Still determining if circle hooks or J hooks are the best bet, and if we can catch some decent specimens with hooks that don't have barbs.
My basic scientific question is What species of sharks call our local waters home?
Some of the specimens can easily be identified with a general age, while others won't.
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| Different Shark species and their relative size to each other and a scuba diver. |
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