The Atlantic Shark Institute announced this week that its researchers, for the first time, placed a data-gathering tag on a hammerhead shark.
Video of the encounter, which happened last week in waters off Block Island, went viral. It was captured by filmmaker Tomas Koeck, who was filming for the docuseries “Ocean State: Rhode Island’s Wild Coast.”
Koeck has described the series as a love letter to the state’s marine life.
This week, the New England Emmy-nominated pilot for the series, “Chasing Fins” – chronicling the Atlantic Shark Institute at work – is being re-released to coincide with Shark Week. Koeck and Atlantic Shark Institute executive director Jon Dodd sat down with Ocean State Media morning host Luis Hernandez to discuss the episode, which contains some exciting new content.
Click here for more information about Ocean State: Rhode Island’s Wild Coast
Interview highlights
On tagging a hammerhead shark near Block Island
Jon Dodd: It was a really exciting find for us. It was a wonderful day and good for science, and it will help us answer some questions. At the same time, they didn't like it here a couple of decades ago, so we're also a little concerned about that. The video that Tomas got, which is spectacular and has gone viral; that's actually a scalloped hammerhead, and it's extremely rare for these waters. It's actually an endangered shark. So that was really spectacular. We were super excited when we zoomed in on that video and said, "Son of a gun, this isn't a smooth hammerhead. This is a scalloped."
We were chasing these sharks a little bit because they're super finicky trying to get them on a hook. Tomas was videoing some beautiful whale footage – which you guys will see at some point – and we ran into a couple of sharks, and this guy happened to swim by. We chased it down, and we presented a bait in a particular way, and lo and behold, it took it, and we were able to get it to the boat, and (conduct) measurements, and get a sex on it, and take some other data down, and get a tag in it, and send her on her way.
On the changes in shark species being seen in Rhode Island waters
Dodd: Blue sharks were the shark that Rhode Islanders caught forever. You could go out and catch a blue shark all throughout the summer. We're not seeing that anymore. They don't like the water temperatures here in the summer. They prefer to be up in northern Massachusetts, Maine, and Canada. I've watched that, and we've got data. I've tagged over 1,000 sharks. I've caught a ton of them. So I literally can look at the data, and as these water temperatures increase, we're seeing the sharks that love to be here, they don't love to be here as much anymore. What's coming in their place, we're seeing a lot of sandbar sharks. We're seeing spinner sharks, blacktip sharks. They've always been associated with Florida, really warm waters, and these last few years they're just showing up with greater (frequency)... Most sharks are cold-blooded. They have to be in water that they really enjoy, water temperatures that they can really optimize themselves in, and we're just seeing more and more of that every year.
On filming the tagging of sharks
Tomas Koeck: When you're filming these scenarios, I'm basically trying to be a ghost on the boat. I don't want to get in the way of the tagging. It's chaos. There's stuff everywhere. People are trying to wrangle this shark. The shark's maybe swimming in a way that's not very convenient for the taggers and getting the shark alongside the boat. So I'm doing my best to stay out of everyone's way, but also get the shot that we need to get.
We're also trying to get different angles, so sometimes while John is tagging a shark, we're putting the drone up and getting total vertically down. Other times, we're getting right in the water or next to the water. We're using a pole cam to film in the water. Generally, I will get in the water with sharks, but when John's tagging a shark, it's very dangerous because of the fishing line, not because of the shark itself. So we'll use pole cams attached to Ikelite housings with Canon cameras; cinema-grade cameras. We're just lowering them into the water and filming them that way, and then we also have topside stuff, too, trying to get different angles, different reactions, and again, trying to stay out of everyone's way because in the end, I don't want to disrupt the actual research being done.
Dodd: Having Tomas on the boat these last few years has been really spectacular, and I mean that truly because we're always so busy with what we're doing and what we're trying to get done. I mean, when we have a shark on the line, we don't know exactly what species it is, so depending upon the species, the size, the sex, we have different protocols. We also have different tags that we may be deploying. We're not putting the same tag on every shark, every species, even every size. There's a lot going on, so we've never really taken the time to say, "Hey, who's going to photograph us?" "Who's going to video what we're doing?"... So with Tomas, it's awesome because we look at some of these things he's captured; we'd never capture them, and it allows people to kind of see what we're doing.
On documenting Rhode Island’s biodiversity
Koeck: I think a lot of people are surprised what's around Rhode Island. When you show people how amazing the wildlife is around here, and also the variety that you get here, people get very excited because all of a sudden you're taking, basically, what they thought was only in the tropics, plopping it right here off the Rhode Island coast, so people want to go out and explore. But people are also interested. They're interested in the science, and they want to get to know it more. So my goal with this series is I want people (to see) you don't need to grab a mask and snorkel and go far. You can just jump right in right off the beach on a nice, calm, clear day, and you might see some things that surprise you.
Episodes of Ocean State: Rhode Island's Wild Coast will air throughout the year on Ocean State Media and stream on PBS Passport.
