Yes there is a shark highway, says Sarah McPherson. Scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have discovered that sharks readily access the lagoons of the Palmyra Atoll – a 12km2 ring of reefs and islets in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean – via a deep channel dredged during World War II.
They even found that this highway has its own rush hour, with fishy traffic peaking between 7pm and 8pm. The sharks were counted with an acoustic camera – which uses sonar technology to produce a sound ‘picture’ – for 443 hours over a period of one month.
“Before, we had no way to quantify how often and which sharks were using this space,” said researcher Paul DeSalles. “This study fills those gaps.” Palmyra is a haven for marine wildlife, frequented by at least seven species of shark, with the blacktip reef shark [pictured above] among the most common.
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