The Quest to Be The First to Tag a Shark from A Submarine

This weekend, after a week in the Bahamas with our wonderful partners at the Cape Eleuthera Institute, we managed to achieve history—tagging an animal from a submersible (submarine) for the first time—EVER. Our objective was the deep-sea shark the bluntnose sixgill. This ancient species predates most dinosaurs, and is one of the most dominant predators of the deep sea ecosystem. The lead scientist on the mission, FSU Marine Lab's Dr. Dean Grubbs, has been the first to put a satellite tag on one of these elusive sharks, but until now had only been able to do so by bringing them up to the surface. Because bluntnose sixgills are a deepsea species, it's hard on them physiologically to be tagged in this way. In their typical life cycle, they won't experience daylight, and very rarely the low pressure or warmer temperatures of surface waters. Typically, the data obtained after surface tagging of a six gill is believed to be skewed, as the shark does not return to its natural behaviors for some time after the tagging. Now that we've proven this method can work for deep sea species like the sixgill, we can unlock the world of leviathan deep-sea dwellers and gain important insights into their  movement and behavior.