Recent News
You can help with reef surveyWednesday, June 18, 2014
Budding environmentalists are again being urged to volunteer to help monitor the health of Bermuda’s reef systems.
Citizen scientists invited to participate in Reef Watch
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Islanders are being invited to become citizen scientists while helping to protect Bermuda’s reef system at the second annual Reef Watch event.
Plans Gear Up As Reef Watch 2014 Approaches
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Reef Watch 2014 is scheduled for Saturday, June 28th and members of the community are invited to become Citizen Scientists and participate in an island-wide effort to help monitor the health of Bermuda’s reef systems.
Staff and volunteers praised for their work
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
The volunteers, staff and organisations that helped to make Bermuda’s celebration of World Oceans Day a success are being praised for their “amazing work”.
Charities benefit from $303,640 raised by Catlin End-to-End
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
The Catlin End-to-End Walk raised more than $300,000 for a host of local charities.
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All the latest updates and news from the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum, and Zoo, one of Bermuda's leading visitor attractions!
Andy — a tiger shark tagged in Bermuda by scientists from Nova Southeastern University’s [NSU] Guy Harvey Research Institute [GHRI] in 2014 — is now the longest tracked tiger shark on record.
“Travelling approximately 37,565 miles off the eastern coast of the United States and around Bermuda, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, Andy is now the longest tracked tiger shark on record and shows no sign of slowing down. He’s been going for more than 1,240 days,” GHRI said.
“We are delighted with how long Andy has reported data, which has tremendous value for us as researchers,” said Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., the director of NSU’s GHRI and a professor in the university’s Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography. “This amazing, nearly three and a half year track is revealing clear repeated patterns in the shark’s migrations between summer and winter.”
More than 150 sharks, including tigers, makos and oceanic whitetips, have been tagged by the GHRI in the last decade. The data collected is used to study the migration patterns of these incredible creatures. Andy and many other GHRI tagged sharks can be followed online in near real-time at www.GHRItracking.org.
“Tracking the migration patterns of sharks, like Andy, for extended periods of time allow us to better understand their behavior and habitat utilization, resulting in better knowledge on how to manage the species,” said Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation [GHOF] Chairman Guy Harvey, Ph.D.
According to a paper published in the most recent ICES Journal of Marine Science by Shivji and his colleagues, tiger shark migrations are heavily influenced by a shark’s physical characteristics [i.e. size, age] and environmental variations [i.e. water temperature, prey availability].
“This study, funded by the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, NSU’s GHRI, the Shark Foundation [Hai Stiftung] and the Bermuda Shark Project, reveals not only the environmental factors driving these massive migrations by tiger sharks but also highlights how the different age groups behave,” the Institute said. “This information could prompt fisheries managers to reevaluate how best to protect this near-threatened species.