Featured Post from University of Delaware

Ocean predators help predict hurricanes

Jul 23, 2025

2 min

Just in time for Shark Week, the ocean's most famous predators are experiencing a redemption arc. Marine ecologists at the University of Delaware have fitted sharks with sensors and sent them out into the Atlantic Ocean to gather data that could help predict hurricanes. The research is led by UD professors Aaron Carlisle and Matt Oliver and PhD student Caroline Wiernicki.

Enlisting sharks as amateur meteorologists comes at a critical time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's capacity to forecast hurricanes has been hampered by federal cuts to staff and funding.

Sharks also help speed things up. NOAA has partnered with UD and other Mid-Atlantic universities, which deploy gliders to the continental shelf to collect data that tell researchers what the water column looks like as hurricane season approaches.

The gliders are effective but also slow moving and expensive to deploy and maintain.

The researchers have successfully deployed three tags: two conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) tags on two mako sharks (for oceanographic data collection); and a satellite tag on one white shark (to help evaluate if that species would be a good candidate for CTD tagging down the road).

As of July 21, the white shark has been pinging the research team ever since he was tagged in May. He was recently tracked off Martha's Vineyard and has been surfacing every day – showing up in areas like Cape Cod and Long Island. The mako sharks were tagged off of the Delaware coast and swam south, bopping up and down between the Delmarva Peninsula and just north of Cape Hatteras.

Carlisle, Oliver and Wiernicki are available for interviews. To reach Carlisle directly, visit his ExpertFile profile and click on the contact button. Interested journalists can also send an email to MediaRelations@udel.edu.

Connect with:

Aaron Carlisle

Associate Professor, Marine Science and Policy

Prof. Carlisle research focuses on how the environment and organismal biology interact to influence the ecology of species.

Stable Isotope EcologyEvolutionary BiologyPhysiological EcologyMarine FishesBiological Sciences

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