seaql lab

Data Science for Marine Ecology and Conservation

Tracking the last white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea

Centuries of coastal fishing, and more recently, industrial exploitation have severely impacted this population, which, in the last few decades, has declined to very low levels of abundance. They were historically abundant and widely distributed in the region, and now they are critically endangered. We don’t know how many sharks are left and still know very little about their ecology and biology to protect them.

Because they are scarce and have no aggregation areas similar to other regions, studying them in the field has always been challenging. To address this challenge, we started a multi-institutional monitoring program on white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea.

Research Team

Francesco Ferretti

Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech.

Taylor Chapple

Assistant Professor, Oregon State University

Robert Schallert

Research Scientist, Stanford University

Brendan Shea

PhD Student, Virginia Tech

Jeremy Jenrette

PhD Student, Virginia Tech

Chiara Gambardella

Visiting Research Scientist, Virginia Tech

Stefano Moro

PhD Student, La Sapienza University/Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

Barbara Block

Professor of Marine Science, Stanford University, USA

Austin Gallagher

Research Scientist, Beneath the Waves, USA

Enrico Gennari

Research Scientist, Oceans Research Institute, South Africa

David Curnick

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Zoological Society of London, UK

Sara Al Mabruk

Research Scientist in Marine Biology, Lybia

shark_chase
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