Two rare angel sharks have been successfully tagged with electronic tracking devices and released in Tralee Bay.
It is the first time ever the critically endangered angel shark has been successfully tagged in Ireland,
The conservation exercise was a collaboration led by scientists at the Marine Institute, and local fisherman Michael Peter Hennessy on board the MFV Lady K, and the community.
The tagging of the male and a female angel shark will allow for a better understanding of how this species can be saved from further decline.
Tralee Bay is one of the last strongholds for the angel shark species in Irish waters.
Catches of the species by commercial and recreational fishermen were common in the Tralee Bay area historically.
Reported numbers, however, declined dramatically since the late 1960s and today encounters are so extremely rare that the species is now listed as “Critically Endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Tralee Bay provides a habitat for several other rare and endangered sharks and their relatives, including the undulate ray, sting ray and the extremely rare white skate.
The tagged angel shark were released close to their area of capture north west of the Maharees peninsula and are said to have swam away strongly.
The tags will log and transmit information for the next year, after which they will automatically detach from the fish.
Researchers in the Marine Institute hope these data will uncover critical information about the species' preferred habitats, migration timings and movement behaviour and thus allow for more effective conservation measures to be implemented.
It is hoped that more specimens will be similarly tagged in the coming months with the assistance of the local fishing industry.
The project was funded by the Department of the Marine, as well as the EU through the Biodiversity Scheme.
Angel shark (Squatina squatina), also known as the “Devil’s Banjo”, is a slow growing, long lived and vulnerable species found in waters from North Africa to Norway.
