The scientific community has gotten very good at predicting where storms will hit, but it is more difficult to predict storm intensity. That’s why researchers at the University of Delaware are looking to marine life to see if any creatures in the ocean can lend a hand — or a fin. 

While scientists in the Arctic have used seals and other mammals as data collectors, applying conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) tags to the creatures to get valuable oceanographic data over a vast area of the sea as the animals dive, for researchers in the mid-latitudes, there aren’t many seals or aquatic air-breathing animals around to work with. 

Instead, UD faculty and students have to get creative with what is available: sharks.

This summer, Matt Oliver, the Patricia and Charles Robertson Distinguished Professor of Marine Science and Policy; Aaron Carlisle, associate professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy (SMSP); and Caroline Wiernicki, a doctoral candidate in marine science, have been working on applying the tags to sharks to see if they can gather any information from the creatures. 

The main purpose is to help researchers at both UD and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS) better predict the intensity of hurricanes during hurricane season. 

Oliver said getting the shark tags to transmit the data back to the team at UD is an incredible accomplishment in and of itself. 

“Honestly, the challenge in all of this is getting a tag to report back to you,” Oliver said. “The tag has to get high enough out of the water to transmit, and you have so much variability in animal behavior. Right now, we only have one profile, but the fact that we actually got it to work is a big deal. If we can make this happen on a consistent basis, we can get a lot of high-quality oceanographic data in order to say something quantitatively about the ocean.” 

Wiernicki said the idea is to have the sharks go out on their own to collect scientific data. 

“We send the sharks out with a tag and they can collect the data for us and help augment the resources that we have,” Wiernicki said. “Ultimately, the sharks that carry this tag will act as oceanographers and ocean observing platforms to collect high quality oceanographic data and send it back to us in real time.” 

Currently, to help with hurricane intensity predictions, researchers in the area use robotic gliders, yellow submarine-like vessels, to report back CTD results. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has partnered with Mid-Atlantic universities to set out a glider picket line during hurricane season to help collect the data that helps with hurricane predictions. 

Every summer, these universities partner together and deploy gliders out on the continental shelf to collect CTD data, which provides vertical profiles of the ocean that tell researchers what the water column looks like as hurricane season approaches.

While the gliders are effective, they are also slow moving, restricted to a certain area of the ocean, and expensive to deploy and maintain. 

The research team at UD believes that the sharks will be able to gather more data over a wider range.

“The sharks and the tags are significantly cheaper, faster and have more variability in their movement behaviors,” Wiernicki said. “The idea is that these sharks can go out and help collect more data, more efficiently and then send it back for you rather than deploying the glider picket line.” 

As the water in the Mid-Atlantic portion of the Atlantic Ocean is seasonally stratified — with cold water moving to the bottom and forming what are known as “cold pools” and warmer water moving to the top of the water column in the spring and early summer — it is an ideal test bed for hurricane intensity predictions. By late July to early August, the water has a strong divide of hot water on top with the cold pool lingering on the bottom. 

In theory, the CTD measurements from the sharks will help scientists to better monitor these stratified conditions in the water. 

“For hurricanes, warm water is the gas, and cold water is brakes,” Wiernicki said. “Depending on where that cold pool is relative to the shore, that will impact how strong a hurricane is when it makes landfall or as it approaches our coast.” 

As of July 21, the researchers have successfully deployed two tags: one on a young white shark and one on a shortfin mako shark. The tags were produced by a group at St. Andrews University in Scotland. 

The white shark has been pinging the research team ever since he was tagged in May. He was recently tracked off Martha's Vineyard and has been surfacing every day — showing up in areas like Cape Cod and Long Island. 

The shortfin mako shark swam south toward North Carolina before heading back north. However, he hasn’t been heard from as frequently as the white shark, which the researchers say points to the fact that using these animals as platforms involves a lot of individual variation in behavior. And as this is a relatively new field of research, they accept the fact that they can't simply tell the sharks where to go. 

“Animals as ocean observers is an emerging branch of oceanography,” Oliver said. “Instead of tagging the animals to just figure out where the animals go, it's using the animals to tell you something about the ocean. Even though we're going to get fewer profiles from these sharks, the profiles are going to be spread out in space and time. We’re excited about these tags, and we’re excited about what the sharks can tell us about the ocean.”