Acoustic Tagging – Sand Tiger Sharks In order to track animals in the ocean, scientists sometimes use devices called acoustic tags. An acoustic tag works very much like the E-ZPass system on toll highways. A small tag (the smaller black tube in the scientist’s palm in the picture at right) is either attached to the outside of an animal or implanted, with a few stitches, inside the animal. The receiver (the large black tube in the picture) is attached to a buoy that floats in the ocean. When a tag gets near the receiver, the receiver logs the time and which tag it is sensing. Using acoustic tags and well-placed receivers, scientists can track the movement of an animal through time and space in a way that would be impossible to observe in person.

What can we learn from acoustic tagging? Sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) live off the Massachusetts coast and spend their youth in the shallow waters along the coast. These key apex predators are listed as vulnerable to extinction, and better data about their movements in their inshore nursery areas can help us protect them.

To read more about sand tiger shark research at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at New England Aquarium, visit andersoncabotcenterforoceanlife.org/tag/sand-tiger-sharks/.

©2018 New England Aquarium Acoustic Tagging – Sand Tiger Sharks | Page 1

Try It OutUsing the sample data provided and the attached map, plot the movement of one juvenile sand tiger shark around Duxbury and Kingston bays in Massachusetts in the summer of 2011. (The original data includes more than 18,000 data points. For the purpose of this example, we have sampled every Monday for 10 weeks over the summer, three times a day.)

DATE TIME OF DAY RECEIVER

6/27

Night H

Dawn I

Daytime J

7/4

Night J

Dawn J

Daytime J

7/11

Night H

Dawn none

Daytime H

7/18

Night J

Dawn I

Daytime I

7/25

Night I

Dawn J

Daytime I

8/1

Night A

Dawn G

Daytime A

8/8

Night D

Dawn B

Daytime C

8/15

Night B

Dawn C

Daytime B

8/22

Night none

Dawn none

Daytime F

8/29

Night C

Dawn E

Daytime B

Extension Questions If you were a shark scientist and had acoustic tags and receivers, what study could you design? What other kinds of studies could use acoustic tags?

Some ways to mark the data points to explore these questions:

• Other ways that scientists use acoustic tags

• Other kinds of tags that scientists use

Some questions you might want to explore:

• Where did the shark spend the majority of its time?

• Were the shark’s movements affected by the time of day?

• Were the shark’s movements affected by the time of year?

Some ways to mark the data points to explore these questions:

• Use three different colors for night, dawn, and daytime

• Use 10 different colors in rainbow order for the 10 weeks

©2018 New England Aquarium Acoustic Tagging – Sand Tiger Sharks | Page 2

©2018 New England Aquarium Acoustic Tagging – Sand Tiger Sharks | Page 3

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