BIDDEFORD, Maine — For a second year, researchers at the University of New England launched a buoy in Saco Bay, meant to detect white sharks that visit Maine.
The buoy — one of only two of its kind bobbing off of Maine’s coast — detects white sharks already tagged by researchers on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Last summer, the team launched its first buoy, within eyesight of Old Orchard Beach, and got a ping from a white shark, nicknamed Barbara, in September 2022.
Assistant Professor John Mohan was thrilled to learn the technology worked.
"It's super exciting, you know? When we got the first [ping] on the live system, knowing that it worked," He recalled.
Much is still unknown about the predator's movements into Maine waters in the summer months.
"[We're] trying to learn more about white sharks when they’re coming up here to Maine, and are there any hot spots where they might prefer to be?" Mohan posed. "And, overall, trying to get a better understanding of what the white sharks are doing, so that we can inform public safety."
Exactly one year to the day of their first buoy launch, Mohan's team chose to drop the same buoy — albeit with a new paint job — in deeper water near the original location.
Matt Davis joined both buoy drops as a state scientist for Maine's Department of Marine Resources. His office owns the only other real-time shark buoy off Maine's coast.
Dozens of smaller, soda bottle-sized detection buoys, Davis explained, are spread out elsewhere in the Gulf. But the data on those devices must be retrieved by hand after being collected over time.
"We have two-and-a-half seasons worth of data, and that is certainly something," he said. "But we're still learning about this ecosystem."
For Davis, and the young college researchers, Maine's work in this field is just beginning.
