Basking shark population

February 2001 saw the start of a three-year project aimed at providing much needed scientific information about the movements, distribution and population dynamics of basking sharks in European waters. The results of this research have already helped to underpin the UK Government's successful proposal to list the basking shark on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 2002. The study, which is jointly funded by The Global Wildlife Division of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) and the Marine Biological Association of the UK (MBA), has used sophisticated "pop-up" archival satellite tags to reveal the behaviour and geographical movements of basking sharks. This information is being combined with sighting, stranding and fisheries data so that, we can gain a better understanding of basking shark population demography and dynamics.

In March 2004 our work on basking shark biology expanded with the start of a new two-year project involving the use of state-of-the-art molecular genetic analysis methods. For this work the project team has expanded to bring in the skills of Drs Cath Jones and Les Noble from School of Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. The study will build on results gained from the past three years work using pop-up archival satellite tags to give a more complete picture of the structure and dynamics of basking shark populations in the north east Atlantic.

This web page provides a detailed background to these projects and, as it becomes available, information and results about the tagging programme and results of the molecular genetic analysis of basking shark tissue samples.