The shark, dubbed Kara, was tracked swimming in the area on April 24, following a previously logged visit on March 9.<\/p>\n
A great white shark tagged by researchers in California has returned to the waters off Vancouver Island for the second time in two months \u2014 and she might be pregnant.<\/p>\n
The shark, dubbed Kara, was tracked swimming in the area on April 24, following a previously logged visit on March 9.<\/p>\n
The whale\u2019s route is tracked via an app, Expedition White Shark<\/a>, that follows adult white sharks in real time worldwide and is run by the non-profit Marine Conservation Science Institute<\/a>, which works to protect and restore ocean ecosystems.<\/p>\n A tracking device attached to the tip of the shark\u2019s dorsal fin \u201cpings\u201d when the shark surfaces for several minutes, providing an approximate location.<\/p>\n British Columbians who have the app received pings beginning on March 9, indicating that the great white known as Kara was just south of Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n Kara had travelled the Oregon coast, then down to Eureka, California, before heading up the Oregon coast again and reaching Vancouver, according to the app\u2019s data.<\/p>\n Most recently, the satellite-tagged female, estimated to be nearly five metres long, pinged off San Francisco on March 22 before showing up off the coast of Northern California. After going quiet for a spell, she reappeared near Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n Michael Domeier, the president and executive director of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, said in an Instagram post that the shark may be pregnant.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know for certain, but if she is, her movements could be tied to something even more significant\u2026 something we still don\u2019t fully understand, like where these sharks gestate or give birth,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at this through an ecological lens, her movements make sense. Large marine predators move with their food. For great whites, that often means following pinniped populations along the continental shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n With the March sighting, the number of quality position estimates confirmed Kara is the first great white tracked in B.C. waters, Domeier noted on Instagram.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean that no other shark was tracked there \u2014 it just means there is no dataset recorded this far north.<\/p>\n \u201cThat kind of movement doesn\u2019t match the patterns scientists have documented over the past 30 years. And that\u2019s exactly why this matters and why the research is being done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese sharks are being tracked because we recognize how much we don\u2019t know about them. Kara is a real-time reminder of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Based on previous research, Domeier noted that a \u201cshark like Kara would likely be halfway to Hawaii by now.\u201d<\/p>\n Great white sharks capture the imagination, and for good reason. The apex predators grow to an average of between 11 and 16 feet (three to five metres) long, although some have been recorded over 19 feet (six metres).<\/p>\n But their numbers are relatively low in B.C.\u2019s waters because it\u2019s more of a tropical shark species that prefers warmer water, according to UBC professor William Cheung, Canada Research Chair for Ocean Sustainability and Global Change.<\/p>\n A form of cold-water adaptation might explain why they\u2019ve started showing up on Canadian shores.<\/p>\n Great whites\u2019 circulatory system conserves heat when they contract their swimming muscles. The heat created from that process circulates through their body and warms critical regions.<\/p>\n Their ability to regulate their body temperature is limited. But as ocean temperatures rise due to global warming, more warm-water species like great whites might turn up in B.C waters.<\/p>\n Cheung noted that temperature also affects distribution of the species that great whites prefer to eat. \u201cThe prey species also depends on the environment, so these are direct and indirect factors that affect their distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n Other species that typically prefer warmer waters, such as albacore tuna and sunfish, have been showing up on the B.C. coast more frequently, Cheung said.<\/p>\n Sharks can kill humans \u2014 according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, there have been 188 incidents involving great white sharks in the state since 1950.<\/p>\n But shark attacks on people are \u201cvery rare events globally,\u201d Cheung said, adding Kara is still a \u201crare\u201d sighting, outside the shark\u2019s primary habitat.<\/p>\n \u2014 With files from the Times Colonist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The shark, dubbed Kara, was tracked swimming in the area on April 24, following a previously logged visit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-642018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}