White shark migration trajectories. Highly linear movement patterns during migration suggest a predominance of directed travel (see Del Raye et al. 2013 for more detail).
Pacific white sharks have a long way to go in spring -4000 km from California and Hawaii. A recent publication in the Proceedings of the Royal Society shows that they fuel the trip with a fatty liver.
“We examine depth records from pop-up satellite archival tags to discern changes in buoyancy as a proxy for energy storage in Eastern Pacific white sharks, and assess whether lipid depletion fuels long-distance (approx. 4000 km) migrations. We develop new algorithms to assess body condition, buoyancy and drift rate during drift dives.”
