Wave Magazine Online Jacksonville University News Hub
About 25 students, faculty and staff from JU’s Marine Science Research Institute recently boarded and toured the OCEARCH shark research vessel in downtown Jacksonville.
In addition, OCEARCH Co-Captain Jodi Whitworth and Expedition Leader Chris Fischer gave a great opportunity to four JU Marine Science students to board for a day and then make an overnight trip off the Northeast Florida coast tagging great white sharks.
JU students Krystal Dannenhoffer (Undergraduate), Andrea Leontiou (MS Graduate) Alex Paradise (MS Graduate) and Justina Dacey (MS Graduate) took part. The opportunity was facilitated by JU alumnus and Board of Trustees Chairman Ronald Autrey.
According to its website at ocearch.org, OCEARCH “facilitates unprecedented research by supporting leading researchers and institutions seeking to attain groundbreaking data on the biology and health of sharks, in conjunction with basic research on shark life history and migration. The researchers we support work aboard the M/V OCEARCH, a unique 126-foot vessel equipped with a custom 75,000 hydraulic lift and research platform, which serves as both mothership and at-sea laboratory.”
OCEARCH fieldwork involves attracting, catching, tagging and bio-sampling sharks before they are released.