As shark passionates, we not only dive and snorkel with sharks, we study them to create the research needed to protect them and share this knowledge to all the explorers joining in one of our expeditions.

 

 After several years of working with sharks in many different places inside Mexico, our main research is know focus on one of the most vulnerable species, the scalloped hammerhead shark. The movements and conectivity of this species,  between the aggregation sites for adults and nursing areas of neonates and juveniles, have never been proved and fully studied in Mexico and other places of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP).  Studing where the adult females go to pup is vital to create conservation strategies and protection policies for a marine species, that move beyond national borders. This is being determined by using satellite telemetry to establish the physical movements of the adult organisms to the coastline, but most importantly, genetic tools like mitochondrial DNA, microsatelites and SNPs, will be used to establish the genetic flow between the aggregation sites and the nursing areas, that will help us to understand if this species have site fidelity as well as estimating the population size of the species in the region and determine the genetic variability of the species in the (ETP). To do this, adult hammerhead will be tagged and a biopsy is going to be taken for both, adults in aggregation sites, and neonates and juveniles near the shore. This will be the first study that links the movements and genetic flow of the two stages of the life cycle of this species in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, and is currently underway.

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If you like to support this research, reach to us and we will tell you what you can do to help us.