Internal Acoustic Transceivers Reveal the Annual Social Network Patterns in a Coastal Top Predator

Sand Tigers (Carcharias taurus) are large apex predators resident in the coastal ocean along the Eastern US Coast. Although Delaware Bay and surrounding coastal waters are known summer “hot spots” for Sand Tigers, our understanding of their seasonal movements is less well known. Since 2007, we have implanted more than 300 VEMCO acoustic transmitters in Sand Tigers, which have been detected from Cape Canaveral, Florida to Long Island, New York by collaborators in the Atlantic Cooperative Telemetry (ACT) Network. During the summer of 2012, 20 Sand Tigers were implanted with VEMCO Mobile Transceivers (VMTs), which are capable of both transmitting and receiving coded acoustic pings. To date, two of the 20 sharks have been recaptured, and their VMTs recovered. VMTs recorded detections of 350 individuals, from 8 different species. We analyzed their intra- and interspecific social network, which allowed us to reconstruct the approximate locations of Sand Tigers throughout the year. Changes in the interspecific population dynamics throughout the year revealed evidence of fission-fusion social behavior, which is common in mammals, but rarely documented in non-mammalian species. This project is a unique look at the social network of an apex predator and is a useful model for studies quantifying the social structures of marine animals. In addition, understanding how the aggregations of this species changes (in terms of sex and size class segregation) on spatiotemporal scales is critical for effective protection of the species and will be useful as managers develop conservation plans along the East Coast.