fish feed and grow killing the great white shark

'They’re like common elements and all animals need them to survive,' said Chacon. Once the sample is ready, it gets sent to a lab at the University of California Davis to be analyzed for nitrogen and carbon. Chacon uses a mortar and pestle typically found in a kitchen to crush shark tissue into a fine powder. The samples need to be dried and prepped. 'So, what we’re going to see in the blood is more recent meals the shark has been consuming.' 'Blood cells tend to get regenerated faster than muscle,' she said. The muscle would be like looking at everything the shark ate for a year. The samples are then stored in a sub-zero freezer on campus so that they're in 'good condition' before the team starts drying them.Ĭhacon explained that the muscle and blood act like a shark’s food diary. In order to collect blood and muscle samples, they give the shark what she described as “a tiny poke,' similar to spearfishing. She explained that a team goes out in the ocean with a pole that is similar to what they use when tagging sharks. In order to figure out what sharks have been snacking on, researcher Yamilla Samora Chacon starts out by collecting samples. Samples were collected in the summer of 2020.

Nitrogen signatures show where in the food chain the shark's diet comes from.The samples are stored in a subzero freezer on campus.CSU Long Beach’s Shark Lab have collected muscle and blood samples from great white sharks to figure out their diets.

Fish feed and grow killing the great white shark