DEREK THE BASKING SHARK POPS HIS TAG IN NW SCOTLAND:
Derek’ a 7m long male basking shark, was tagged at 19:20 on August 14th 2016, about 4km NW off Fleshwick on the Isle of Man. His tag now appears to be off in the NW Scottish Isles. We are leaving the tag transmitting in the hope that someone may find his tag. When we tagged Derk he was with another male shark of about 5m length. We took skin slime samples to send to Dr Les Noble’s team at Aberdeen University. Three days after we tagged him, on the 17th August, he had swum half way to Ireland and popped up to the surface for and hour and a half. He then spent some of September and October in what our tagging work has proved to be an important overwintering zone in the middle of the Irish sea before going deep for the winter and therefore not giving up any of his secrets about where he spent the winter! See the excellent scientific paper from Dougherty et al 2016 which includes MBSW satellite tag data at https://www.nature.com/articles/srep42837. Early June his tag revealed him to be in a classic basking shark hot-spot in NW Scotland, just before his tag came off. The SPOT 6 satellite tag from Wildlife Computers was generously sponsored by the Manx Lottery Trust. Funds to support the research boat were generously given by DEFA (the Isle of Man’s Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture. http://www.wildlifetracking.org/index.shtml?project_id=1208
