This fall, a great white shark research expedition is set to take place in Mahone Bay, centered around the recently established Tancook Islands Marine Field Station. The station, located on Big Tancook Island, is the brainchild of Nigel Hussey, a professor at the University of Windsor in the Department of Integrative Biology. Inspired by his experience at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas, Hussey sought to create a similar living lab for students and researchers in Nova Scotia. “That field station was a defining experience,” Hussey says. “Not only for living in the ecosystem you’re studying, but also for learning how to work as a team and operate in a remote environment.”
The station is set to open fully next year, accommodating 12 students for a minimum month-long term. This field station will provide a unique opportunity for young researchers to live and work in the ecosystem they’re studying. “They’ll have a focus on dealing with large predators, but they’ll also be out surveying seagrass beds or sampling prey items,” says Hussey. “If you’re going to understand the sharks, you need to understand the ecosystem they live in.”
Hussey’s dream of establishing a research hub in Canada started during his first expedition with OCEARCH in 2018, which revealed an unexpected presence of white sharks in Atlantic Canada. “There are a lot more white sharks in Canadian waters than there have been in the last 50 years,” Hussey says. Since 2014, around 300 white sharks have been electronically tagged in the Atlantic between Florida and Newfoundland. Last year, an array of acoustic receivers deployed by the field stations in Mahone Bay detected 100 of these sharks.
Research will focus on three key areas of white shark research: tracking their movement patterns to identify important habitat, analyzing population demographics such as age, sex, size, and behavior, and understanding their role within the Atlantic Canadian ecosystem.
