The team used a combination of acoustic tracking tags and underwater cameras mounted onto the sharks to track and observe the animals' behavior when humans aren't around. It was a phenomenon that was going to take a diverse toolkit to figure out.
It was like some sort of strange conveyor belt – the sharks would inch forward against the current, be carried back, then inch forward again. "It's interesting because it's a pretty strong current."Īs they crept forward to the front of the channel, the lead sharks would slip backwards, letting the current carry them back to the starting position. "During the day, they're pretty placid and relaxed, swimming with minimal effort," Papastamatiou explained. Even more interestingly, they were remarkably still, barely moving their fins or tails. They need to keep moving in order to extract enough oxygen with their gills to keep them alive, so stationary resting, like the way other animals rest, is out of the question.Įxactly how sharks rest was a bit of a puzzle, until on a dive during the day, Papastamatiou noticed that the sharks were swimming against the updraft current in a certain channel. These sharks never stop swimming for their entire lives. The revelation came when a research team led by Yannis Papastamatiou of Florida International University was studying the nocturnal hunting behavior of grey reef sharks ( Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) at Fakarava Atoll in French Polynesia.
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