AnnieL's current event

Annie Lowenstein

January 15, 2016

DaffyDucks

Mystery Solved? How Sharks Find Their Way Home

By: Traci Watson

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160106-sharks-leopard-smells-navigate-oceans-animals-science/

 PUBLISHED WED. JAN 06 14:00:00 EST 2016

Sharks are one of the world's most mysterious creatures. Scientists have been observing them for many years. In my article, scientists were conducting an experiment and analyzing how sharks find their way home. In the article, “Mystery Solved? How Sharks Find Their Way Home,” scientists work to solve the mystery on how sharks navigate through the ocean to get home. The article was released on the National Geographic website on January 6, 2016. Some sharks can travel the distance from Hawaii to California--that’s about 2,390 miles! Prior to reading this, I had always been fascinated with sharks and knew they had a great sense of smell, but I was amazed about how much I didn't know. Like the fact that they routinely travel thousands of miles. The scientists got together a couple sharks and brought them about 6 miles away from their preferred hangout. Then they stuffed cotton balls up some of their noses and released them the opposite way from where they were trying to go and kept a close eye on them. They saw that after just 30 minutes the sharks without cotton balls found their way back to where they originally were. This experiment took place off the shores in San Diego, California. This is only the first step to uncovering all of the sharks many secrets, it will help us better understand why sharks are a vital part of the underwater environment.  

I really enjoyed this article, because I am fascinated with sharks. It started when I was about the age of 9, we went to an aquarium and I could not take my eyes about this creature almost ten times the size of me. While I was browsing through National Geographic, I saw, “Mystery Solved? How Sharks Find Their Way Home”. As soon as I saw that words “Sharks”, it went to the top of my list. I loved reading the article because of the topic, not to mention that I learned a lot. I didn’t know that sharks rely mostly on their sense of smell. Based on the information given in the article, I’d disagree that sense is the key to finding their way home. Another scientist agrees, “It’s also unlikely the animals were following an odor that grew stronger closer to land,” says Jayne Gardiner. This is true, just because the sharks with cotton balls up their noses had a harder time getting home doesn't mean that smelling is the key. As  Kim Holland says, “Maybe the animals with plugged nostrils “were confounded by the fact that they had something stuffed in their nose,”  This experiment could only be the beginning of our true knowledge on sharks. Who knows what can be done with the information given in this article? Humans can now help ( in extreme cases) if a shark with an impaired sense of smell needs help, scientists can help to figure out a way to do so. Just from the title, I immediately generated questions. For example, right off the bat I was wondering if they could see/remember their surroundings with their eyes, or if sharks had some kind of echolocation similar to bats? Also, I wondered how long it took for them to get home after traveling a great distance away from their home? Over all, I can say that I learned a lot, and I’d like to do more research on this topic in the future.

BIBlIOGRAPHY

Watson, Traci. "Mystery Solved? How Sharks Find Their Way Home."

    nationalgeographic.com. National geographic, 6 Jan. 2016. Web. 16

    Jan. 2016. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/

    160106-sharks-leopard-smells-navigate-oceans-animals-science/>. I got

    all my information plus my image off of this website.