Lydia, the great white shark tagged by researchers to document her movement through the oceans, became the first marine animal to be observed crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
Lydia began travelling on March 2013 at Jacksonville, Fla. and since then, the researchers have been closely monitoring her activities. Scientists hypothesized that great whites can cross the Atlantic Ocean and to prove this; they needed to track Lydia and her journey. The satellite tag was attached to the 14-foot shark's dorsal fin and transmits information when Lydia rises above the water.
The great white shark is now at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range which is facing the Cornish coast of U.K. Researchers are now considering the ridge as one of the official points which great white sharks pass through when they cross the Atlantic.
According to the data transmitted by the tag, Lydia has travelled 20,000 miles, breaking the record of a female that swam for 12,427 miles while crossing the Indian Ocean. Ocearch, the organization that devised the tags used for Lydia, is displaying real-time tracks of her journey on their website.
The researchers theorized that Lydia is following the food supply when she headed for Europe. Great white shark expert from the University of California, Davis, Peter Klimley explained to National Geographic that sharks usually go on long trips to look for food. They hunt for sea lion colonies thriving in the Guadalupe Islands of Baja, California and the Farallon Islands of San Francisco. After that, they swim out to the middle of the Pacific again, and then come back to the mammal colonies they found earlier.
Lydia is predicted to appear at the U.S East Coast again. Fisheries research biologist at the U.S National Marine Fisheries Service located at La Jolla, California, Heidi Dewar said that it's likely that Lydia will come back. "That seems to be the typical pattern for females," she told National Geographic.
"They'll give birth, then they "go off and forage, and travel pretty wide distances for two years or so, and then they come back," she added.
Dewar also stated that information about Lydia's journey could lead to more effective conservation practices for their species. "The large females are a really important part of the population, and until you know what's going on, it's hard to develop conservation strategies to protect them," she said to National Geographic.
