Junior SeaKeepers 2024-25 Graduation Floating Classroom - Shark Tagging with UM SRC

Overview

On June 26th, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society's Educational Outreach team hosted 6 of our graduating class of Junior SeaKeepers for our final floating classroom of the 2024-25 cohort, a shark tagging research day with the University of Miami's Shark Research and Conservation Program aboard Research Vessel Garvin. To start our day, our JSKs met the shark research team led by Dr. Catherine Macdonald and her students before learning about important boat safety and heading out into Biscayne Bay. Once we arrived at our sampling location, our students were able to help the SRC team in deploying baited drum lines. The team explained to our students how drum lines utilize larger bait and are meant to sit lower in the water column as a means to attract the largest sharks for sampling.

Throughout the day with 30 total drums at ten distinct sampling locations, we managed to catch 3 sharks - including a baby tiger shark, a large nurse shark, and an adult blacktip shark. Upon catching each of these amazing animals, our students had the chance to both watch up close and assist the research process through participating in key roles like tagging, taking a genetic sample, and taking size measurements of each animal. To conclude our day, our students got the chance to learn from some of the shark research team about the process of data analysis and even help out with preparing shark blood samples! We are immensely grateful for all the incredible work that SRC does and are beyond thankful for the opportunity to work with them, and it proved to be a great way to celebrate the hard work our JSKs had put in all year and program long. We cannot thank Dr. Macdonald and the team enough for an unforgettable day and we hope to see these great JSKs at future SeaKeepers events.

Photos courtesy of Nola Schoder, University of Miami Shark Research and Conservation Program.